Bing Goes Beyond the Box, Rolling Out a New Design, New Features, New Apps

Microsoft has always positioned Bing to be more than just a simple search engine. A few years back they promoted the web property as a "decision engine" to try and help differentiate between the Bing offering and those from competitors like Yahoo and Google. On my continuing road to be Google-free, I recently wrote about choosing Bing over Google and never looking back. You can read about the reasons why in Life without Google: Search.

So, I've been a Bing fan for a long while and have enjoyed using it as a search engine. But, taking a brief look at what Microsoft has announced they are bringing (*ahem* "binging") to Bing.com, my interest is piqued even further.

In addition to rolling out a new, "modern" logo that I'm not sure I really like yet…

…Microsoft is adding the following new features:

Bing for Windows 8.1 – In Windows 8.1, Bing takes center stage providing a single location/interface to search ALL things including the web, map, music and videos.

New Apps – Bing is adding Food & Drink and Health & Fitness apps. I know there's quite a few "foodies" out there who will be checking out Food & Drink, particularly for the ability to "wave" your hand in front of your Windows tablet to navigate recipe pages, ensuring your floured hands don't muck up the tablet screen. I'm most interested in the Health & Fitness app. Currently, I cobble together different apps to give a full fitness tracking experience. If Health & Fitness provides the experience I'm looking for, I could pare that number down.

Bing for Windows Phone – Windows Phone will get some added features, too, including a translator app that can translate real world text, and better Bing voice search.

Bing for Xbox – Bing for Xbox allows you to utilize Microsoft's search engine to locate games, music, movies, and TV shows, all through voice commands.

Bing for Microsoft Office – Bing powers some Microsoft Office extras through Bing Maps, Power Map for Excel, and Image Search.

Go here to check out the new features coming: New Bing