Microsoft have never mastered Search Engine Technology. They've huge resources at their disposal, and we all know the arguements said to have taken place when the dreaded 'G' word is ever mentioned in MS circles, particulary amongst some of the Senior MS Board. They even tried 'buying a search engine' at one stage. Now they've launched/are launching something new....excuse us if we don't get too excited.

Called 'Bing' (perhaps a bit unfortunate if you are one of the UK's happless UK savers or investors), the search engine promises to have 4 main 'verticals', not in itself a bad idea. Their verticals are said to be shopping around, travel planning, researching health conditions and local business search.

Let's tackle these one at a time...Shopping around.  Hhhhhmmm, ok, like the failed Froogle set up? Or more product rather than range driven technology (something that frustrates the life out of developers and SEO guys alike)?

Travel is said to possibly be included because of their purchase of technology site, Farecast. Fair enough, I guess if you've laid out some cash for a new pair of shoes, you'd want to wear them and show them off!

But Researching health Conditions? Who thought of that? Come on, hands up, which geek fresh out of US Med school offered this one up to the board at Microsoft? But then, maybe this is to do with MS's ownership of Healthvault?

Local Business Search. We all know where this has come from, and suspiciously it's a service deployed actually quite well by rivals at Yahoo!  Nothing like green eyed envy!

What's more, existing well branded services are being named after Crosby, I mean, er Bing. Take Bing Maps for Enterprise...that used to be Virtual Earth to you and me!

Personally, we wait to be convinced regarding this latest foray into Search. If you want to know more, these guys know more than us.