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Microsoft Bing Search Launches Early Preview
An anonymous reader writes to mention that Microsoft has rolled out a preview version of their Bing Search site earlier than expected. Microsoft's hope at putting a dent in Google's ubiquitous search presence, Bing has several new features including Bing Cashback, Bing Video, and Bing xRank. "Bing Video is really great because of the new thumbnail video feature. Try searching for E3 at Bing Video and you'll quickly see how it works. Simply hover over a video and it starts playing instantly. This is fantastic from the consumer's point of view but what about the publisher? It's almost like Microsoft is stepping on their toes by deploying video search in this manner. Would a user still click on to the site if they can watch the whole video from within the search results? Fair use definitely comes into mind here. Perhaps there should be a 30second limitation on the 'thumbnail preview?'"
Big surprise, the video refuses to load unless you have Windows Media Player. Despite the fact that I view wmv's all over the net just fine with mplayer, yet somehow MS can't seem to make this work. Typical. MS needs to get a clue and realize that they can't expect to gain market share in new areas if they lame out all of their products to try and reinforce their OS monopoly. They don't seem to be able to see the flip side of their reasoning, which is that loss of OS market share will be amplified in their other products rather than mitigated. Do they honestly expect to pull market share from youtube while telling users to go away until they install windows?