Those who know me (or my opinion-based content here) know that I tend to favor Google, the practical monopoly that may or may not be evil. However, there are various competitors who have truly stepped up their game in recent months. It’s easy for me to say that, yes, Yahoo does entertainment better, Bing knows its sports, and Blekko is onto something with its human curation. One other area where Bing has beaten Google soundly is in the smartphone search app division; while Google essentially links their search page, Bing has an optimized application. Now Bing has released a similar app for iPads, too, showing up Google once again.
This Bing application is similar to the smartphone version in many ways, but also takes advantage of several tablet-specific opportunities. This includes pushing for a more media-rich mode of exploring the web. Bing focuses on bringing people to visually rich pages, new movie trailers, and more. Bing is also ensuring maximum optimization for mobility, with a Bing Maps feature (using the beloved and attractive Silverlight), local weather, and voice search.
One feature that’s exclusive to the iPad (i.e., you won’t see this on Bing for the smartphone or desktop environment) is Bing Trends. This image-heavy interface will allow users to see, at a glance, what’s popular on the web right now. A single tap will then bring users to other web content that gives more information on the hot topic.
The app is available for free to all iPad users, and requires iOS 4.2 or higher.
[via the Bing Blog]
