Out with curly and blue; in with angular and gold. Microsoft’s Bing search engine has just received a major redesign which it’s hoped will reinvigorate the service — but is it really enough?
The new logo uses the same colour as one of the Windows quadrants, a stylised “b”, and a sharp Segoe font for the rest of the name — a more modern look than the rather flabby, curly offering of old. Speaking to The Verge, Microsoft’s design lead Lawrence Ripsher explained that “the logo, obviously, is a big deal for us, a lot more angular and fresh and sharper than we’ve used in the past.”
Elsewhere, the design of the entire search engine has been given an overhaul, too, to make it more user friendly. So, Page Zero provides some search results before you’ve finished typing your entire query, while Pole Position highlights specific results right at the top of your search. In fairness, the changes are fairly subtle, but apparently Microsoft plans to roll out more radical results layouts soon, too.
It’s doubtful that any of this is enough to tempt most users away from Google — but Microsoft seems keen to create a search engine which doesn’t involve buying in to an entire ecosystem. “Our approach at Bing has been, for a long time, to not necessarily build our own social network, to not build our own video channel, to not build all these things that we want to work with,” explains Stefan Weitz, Microsoft’s director of Search, to Verge. “We partner.” It must sure be hoping that partnering pays off. [Bing via The Verge]