Skip to main content

Bing Works to Bring Entertainment Front and Center

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Microsoft is hoping digital entertainment can bring more eyeballs to its Bing search service: the company has unveiled new features that aim to surface online entertainment options—with special focuses on music, TV, movies, and gaming—so users can turn to Bing to make “entertainment decisions,” not just search the Internet.

“We see a great opportunity to help customers make important entertainment decisions—from deciding what movie to buy or see, which TV shows to watch online or on your TV, what music to listen to, how to find and safely play your favorite casual games,” said Microsoft senior VP for Bing Yusuf Mehdi, in a blog post. “Bing is making a first step today to help make entertainment on the Web easy and fun, so you spend less time searching for entertainment and more time doing the stuff you love.”

Recommended Videos

On the gaming front, Microsoft worked with its in-house games team to offer nearly 100 casual online games right within Bing. Users can now play many popular online games right within BIng, which Microsoft is touting as a security benefit (no need to worry about malware sites) but also as a social win: players can tap into their social networks from the games.

Bing has also assembled a collection of thousands of full-length television shows that users can watch from within Bing, including some high-definition content. Bing’s music search now pulls up lyrics within Bing, as well as colates information like tour dates, photos, and videos within the search engine; Microsoft also tapped its Zune team to offer full-length streaming of more than 5 million songs, with links to purchase through iTunes, Amazon, or (of course) the Zune Store. Folks into movies will find information not just on local theaters and show times, but information on where to park, nearby restaurants for the dinner-and-a-movie experience, along with reviews and comments from social media services.

Bing has set up a dedicated page to the changes; music streaming should be running in a few days, and a TV listings service will be “along in a couple of weeks.”

Microsoft’s entertainment strategy with Bing is kind of a throwback to the bad old days of Internet portal sites, where companies not only sought to be a users’ preferred gateway to the Internet, but also to encapsulate a users’ entire mainstream Internet experience. It remains to be seen whether Internet users are ready to lock themselves into a portal like Bing for online entertainment; however, the comprehensiveness of the features definitely helps Bing in its ongoing competition with the likes of Google for eyeballs…and ad revenue.

Geoff Duncan
Former Contributor
Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…
With Copilot Actions, Microsoft brings AI agents to Outlook, Teams, and more
microsoft expanding ai agents 365 copilot early 2025 actions2

Microsoft plans to roll out a slew of new features for its business-facing 365 Copilot products starting early next year, the company announced during its Microsoft Ignite 2024 event on Tuesday.

365 Copilot, which was rebranded from just Copilot in September, enables businesses to incorporate Microsoft Copilot generative AI into its Microsoft 365 family of apps (as well as in Teams) for a $30/employee/month subscription.

Read more
Microsoft is adding a controversial app to Windows 11
Microsoft Surface Laptop 2 sitting on a table.

A new Windows 11 build is rolling out in Microsoft's Beta channel, and it includes an app that's been caught up in some controversy. Build 22635.3646 includes the PC Manager app for devices in China by default. This app is already available through the Microsoft Store, but the update suggests the app might be part of Windows 11 more broadly soon.

PC Manager falls in the category of "system optimizers" along the lines of the  Razer Cortex Game Booster. It cleans out temporary files, frees memory that's not being used, and digs deep into your hard drive to clean out unused files. According to Microsoft, it can even "reduce ads and app pop-up interruptions." An system optimizer from Microsoft sounds great as an official release in Windows 11.

Read more
Nvidia ARM laptops may be in the works, and that could change everything
Intel and Nvidia badges on the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16.

Imagine a laptop with an iteration of Nvidia’s ARM-based CPU combined with a powerful RTX graphics card, all enhanced by AI. Years ago, that would have sounded outlandish, but now it seems like it could actually happen.

In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Dell CEO Michael Dell more or less confirmed that Team Green will enter the AI-PC hype next year.

Read more