Skip to main content

With its latest overhaul, Bing wants to be your only search engine for online video

If you’re familiar enough with the Internet to be reading this sentence, you already know how huge online video has gotten. And as it continues to grow, we’re starting to see a problem: How do you actually find what you’re looking for?

When most people are looking for a video, they’ll either head straight to YouTube, or start with a Google search. Microsoft is looking to change that with a recent overhaul to its Bing video search. While the old video search was clunky and dated-looking, the new update gives the UI an overhaul with bigger images and a more touch-friendly design.

Recommended Videos

For many people, YouTube does double duty as a replacement for music streaming services like Spotify, so Microsoft has focused on improving search results for songs. Now results show a “hero” image — an enlarged thumbnail of the most relevant result. This video can be played in place, even as users continue clicking through to a separate video page if they wish.

If the video you’re looking for isn’t shown as a “hero” result, the updated Bing still makes the right video easier to find by showing more information for each of the results that do appear. Information like the channel that uploaded the video, view count, and the date the video was uploaded all make it easier to find the right video as opposed to a knockoff.

Related searches have been moved inline with the original search, so you’ll have a better idea of where to go next as you look through the results. Once you reach the bottom of the page, you’ll see even more suggestions. Users can also now get a preview of videos without clicking on them — hovering the cursor over a video will play a short snippet.

Of course, Google’s video search is still fine, and will likely remain the go-to destination for many people, even if only because it’s what they already use. With this latest update, however, Bing has thrown down the gauntlet in improved service. Now it’s Google’s turn to respond.

Kris Wouk
Former Contributor
Kris Wouk is a tech writer, gadget reviewer, blogger, and whatever it's called when someone makes videos for the web. In his…
Bing Image Creator brings DALL-E AI-generated images to your browser
Bing Image Creator being used in the Edge sidebar.

Microsoft isn't slowing down its momentum in generative AI. Just a month since it launched the ChatGPT-based Bing Chat, the company is now introducing Bing Image Creator, which brings text-to-image generation right to your browser.

Bing Image Creator lets you create images from text using DALL-E, which is OpenAI's own text-to-image AI model. Microsoft says it's using "an advanced" version of DALL-E, though the company didn't provide specifics about how it was different than the current DALL-E 2 model. This isn't dissimilar, though, to how Bing Chat was announced, which had been running on GPT-4 before the new model had even been announced.

Read more
This new Microsoft Bing Chat feature lets you change its behavior
The new Bing chat preview can be seen even on a MacBook.

Microsoft continues updating Bing Chat to address issues and improve the bot. The latest update adds a feature that might make Bing Chat easier to talk to -- and based on some recent reports, it could certainly come in handy.

Starting now, users will be able to toggle between different tones for Bing Chat's responses. Will that help the bot avoid spiraling into unhinged conversations?

Read more
I’ve seen the (distant) future of AI web search – here’s where it’s amazing, and where it struggles
Bing copilot AI chat interface.

The aggressiveness with which artificial intelligence (AI) moved from the realm of theoretical power into real-world consumer-ready products is astonishing. For several years now, and up until a couple of months ago when OpenAI's ChatGPT broke onto the scene, companies from the titans of Microsoft and Google down to myriad startups espoused the benefits of AI with little practical application of the tech to back it up. Everyone knew AI was a thing, but most didn't actually utilize it.

Just a handful of weeks after announcing an investment in OpenAI, Microsoft launched a publicly-accessible beta version of its Bing search engine and Edge browser powered by the same technology that has made ChatGPT the talk of the town. ChatGPT itself has been a fun thing to play with, but launching something far more powerful and fully integrated into consumer products like Bing and Edge is an entirely new level of exposure for this tech. The significance of this step cannot be overstated.
ChatGPT felt like a toy; having the same AI power applied to a constantly-updated search database changes the game.
Microsoft was kind enough to provide me with complete access to the new AI "copilot" in Bing. It only takes a few minutes of real-world use to understand why Microsoft (and seemingly every other tech company) is excited about AI. Asking the new Bing open-ended questions about planning a vacation, setting up a week of meal plans, or starting research into buying a new TV and having the AI guide you to something useful, is powerful. Anytime you have a question that would normally require pulling information from multiple sources, you'll immediately streamline the process and save time using the new Bing.
Let AI do the work for you
Not everyone wants to show up to Google or Bing ready to roll up their sleeves and get into a multi-hour research session with lots of open tabs, bookmarks, and copious amounts of reading. Sometimes you just want to explore a bit, and have the information delivered to you -- AI handles that beautifully. Ask one multifaceted question and it pulls the information from across the internet, aggregates it, and serves it to you in one text box. If it's not quite right, you can ask follow-up questions contextually and have it generate more finely-tuned results.

Read more