There will be hundreds of articles over the next few weeks about Microsoft's new search place - called Bing - that will take over from the Live Brand of search and I presume everything else.
Goodbye Microsoft Live Search, Hello Bing, Stuart J. Johnston, Internet News (May 29)
Some are saying it is better at finding relevant results than Live ever was. It's being called a "decision engine" - to help people make decisions starting in the consumer areas of shopping, travel, local companies, and health.
"Within those areas, the idea is to provide an organized "experience" where all the information that a user would need -- say, for planning a trip -- is available in one place. Other features meant to enhance the experience include a "quick preview" function that lets a user hover over a link to provide a caption of what's at the link, as well as an "instant answer" capability that aims to provide all the needed information on a single results page."
Travel component sounds promising -- Bing is using Virtual Earth for maps (renamed to Bing Maps), Farecast for travel information on flights and hotels, and Powerset semantic language processing.