Windows & Interoperability: Bing Hopes Enhanced Health Search Will Sicken Google

Microsoft started off 2010 by offering the "enhanced Bing Health search experience," designed to return data from multiple sources in response to health-related queries. Typing in hospitals, diseases or terms such as "weight loss" will often trigger a results page that collates everything from lists of medical centers to chemistry diagrams. Microsoft hopes making its results pages more robust will allow it to compete more directly against Google, which continues to dominate the search-engine market. During his keynote address at the 2010 CES in Las Vegas, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said one of Bing's goals in 2010 would be to "understand user intent and anticipate what users are really looking for." Bing's health results are an indicator of Microsoft's thinking in that direction.