Last week Microsoft and ninemsn launched its latest search offering, Bing, phasing out Windows Live Search. This time the sights are set directly on Google’s legacy, with a $100 million campaign.

Tapping the zeitgeist, the campaign harks to the GFC, internet celebrities and anxieties about bad information leading to inept decision making. Bing purports to solve search overload and implies its accuracy will help you save money. Bing could even become a verb itself, but some have said that binging doesnt have quite the right ring.

Bing is defining itself as a decision engine rather than as a direct search engine, which is not dissimilar to Wolfram|Alphas recent launch as a computational-knowledge engine.

Bing’s current Facebook and Twitter followings have reached 20,000 and 16,000 respectively.

In addition to TVC, Microsoft plans to advertise on ITV website Hulu.com. Microsoft has also bought multiple two-hour slots on The New York Times website, where every advertisement will promote Bing.

In Sydney last week, Marketingmag.com.au witnessed a Bing demostration and we were pleased to see such features as a flight tracker, video thumbnail preview, infinite scroll and more detail displayed in organic results, added to the Bing engine. 

Edit 9/6/09 to add in the new Bing TVC. More video is available from the Bing YouTube channel – www.youtube.com/user/bing.