I really don’t see this as a move towards trying to become a ‘retro Google'... Looking at where MSFT is heading with a unified design across all its products and properties, it looks to me like a natural evolution of the page becoming more ‘Metro’ (simple, clean, intuitive). And there are really only so many ways to display text/links in a 'minimalistic' fashion while keeping the basic functionality people expect...<p>I’d guess though that this is a first in a series of small, gradual, changes to the site geared toward 'metrofying' it. I bet we’ll soon see Segoe replace Arial as the predominant font next.
Bing styles itself as a retro Google, to capture people who long for the old days.<p>Chrome OS styles itself as an old Windows desktop (compared to forthcoming Win8) to capture people who long for the old days.<p>Business as usual.
Forgive me for being too blatant, but I'm puzzled by their reason of doing this. Do people really switch search engines because of the UI? I understand that some people might prefer the less cluttered version, but when it comes down to it, the way it looks is secondary to its primary function: giving you good results. After a while, the look becomes less important.<p>I don't think it also serves their interest well, too, when their UI is a reminder of their competitor (the retro look of their competitor, to be precise). Google succeeded with a minimalistic UI because it made them look different from the rest and no one did it before. When Bing does it now, it makes them look like Google.
if bing is interested in optimizing its 15% search market share, this is a nice move (and don't get me wrong, 15% of search is a pretty big business). BUT, if they're interested in upending the market and really doing something interesting, they should have a chat with duckduckgo to see what the future of search might look like.<p>my hunch is the former is their goal...
Is porn the 7th result down for anyone else?<p>Screenshot:
<a href="https://twitter.com/#!/gee_totes/status/197695446821519360" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/#!/gee_totes/status/197695446821519360</a><p>At least, I think that's a porn link. Don't dare click on it because I'm on a work computer.
A word of appreciation for the highlighting of the search words in the cached page, such as Google had and lost.<p>(Having to bulls-eye a dinky little triangle to click 'cached' in a single-item drop-down ... not so much appreciated.)
Does this mean that Bing is on its way to being a billion dollar website? See number 1 here: <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html</a>.
Very smart, and spooky.. I was using Bing yesterday and noticed how it was so cluttered. Nobody likes to see so much text squeezed so close together. Glad they got rid of the left hand text. Great stuff. I was close to switching to Bing, and this may have sealed it for me.
I like it but why couldn't they go all the way and leave out the dropdown image on top? It's jarring to the otherwise clean and enticing page. Put a non-intrusive link instead.<p>The above rant aside, I think it's a good move on their part.