New Money Search Engines : BING.com, Zune HD

When Microsoft talks innovation, it tends to sound like deja vu all over again.

BING is not the latest alarm notifying a blue screen but the name of Redmond's latest philosopher's stone / quest for the Holy Grail / shoot'em all kill app : a search engine meant to compete with Google. Not at the user experience level but at the announcer experience level, judging by the teaser (maybe "trailer" is more appropriate) released on bing.com, where contextual advertising stars from every angle. The actual URL where you can enjoy this short movie is decisionengine.com, which may lead you into thinking that you won't be looking at things you don't want to find, only at relevant bits of knowledge for sound decision making. Comparing prices, sorting URLs by categories... that kind of totally "unknown" features. The main news here : Live Search is still alive.

ZUNE goes HD. It remains a music / multimedia player, but now you can also play games, and even surf the internet. FM radio, which proved successful on the first version, becomes HD radio. The screen becomes a touch screen. And as if to prove Zune failed on the core promise (competing with iPod and other sexier devices), Microsoft added familiar and sure bets from its roster (Windows CE). Zune synchronizes with Xbox, and the brand could become Microsoft's central video and multimedia content platform to compete with more successful stores.

Zune is not the iPhone killer. Bing is not the Google killer. But Microsoft intends to remain a killer.



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