Google Hits Back Against Bing

As Microsoft's repackaged search takes off, Google musters the firepower to stay top dog.

With an 81% market share of search, you’d think Google wouldn’t be too worried about, Bing, Microsoft’s revamped and repackaged search engine. After all, it’s only has 5.3% of the market, trailing Yahoo.

But Google is obviously taking the challenge seriously by enhancing the capabilities of its own search engine to keep people coming back.

Google software engineer Lingyun Liu said in a blog post that when locations are searched, the company is putting images next to maps and links, and clicking on them takes users to the photos layer on Google Maps, which offers more images.

“Knowing the geographical location of a place is only part of the story.”

“It’s often just as valuable to get a sense of what the place is like, and there’s no better way to do that than by looking at images of some of its most important sights.”

Additionally, Google Product Search has widened its horizons to include “all devices with an internet connection in the US, UK, Germany and South Korea.” Users only have to enter your product query on google.com and select the ‘Shopping results…’ link.”

Finally it’s also possible to filter image searches in Google by Creative Commons license, to ensure copyrighted material isn’t used.