Bing has been officially announced by Microsoft at D7 today. Bing.com isn’t working yet, as it’ll begin to roll out over the coming days and fully deployed worldwide on the 3rd of June. A lot of research has been done by Microsoft to come with Bing and improvements in search. Some of the new features in Bing are:

• Best Match where the best answer is surfaced and called out
• Deep Links allowing more insight into what resources a particular site has to offer
• Quick Preview a hover-over window that expands over a search result caption to provide a better sense of the related site’s relevancy.
• one-click access to information through Instant Answers.
• Explore Pane a dynamically relevant set of navigation and search tools on the left side of the page
• Web Groups which groups results in intuitive ways both on the Explore Pane and in the actual results
• Related Searches and Quick Tabs which is essentially a table of contents for different categories of search results.
• Bing Decision Engine for assistance in decision making
• Rate Key compares the location, price and amenities of multiple hotels and provides a color-coded key of the best values
• Price Predictor actually helps consumers decide when to buy an airline ticket in order to get the lowest prices.

Update: Here are some images of Bing as posted by TechCrunch
Update 2: Long Zheng posted a video tour of Bing. Also a letter by the Bing Team is posted on http://www.decisionengine.com/Default.html . Quoted below

You probably didn’t wake up today expecting an entirely new search experience.

But — Bing! — here it is.

So, why a new search engine? Why the new name? Why now?

Well, because even though search is a pretty amazing thing, the current state of search engines has some equally amazing statistics.

So far in 2009, there are four and a half websites created EVERY SECOND as the web continues to expand. While more searchable information is cool, nearly half of all searches don’t result in the answer that people are seeking.

At the same time, the way the world searches is changing. You want more than just information. You want knowledge that leads to action.

The truth is you’ve evolved. It’s time search caught up.

So we had an idea. Start over. And we did.

We took a new approach to go beyond search to build what we call a decision engine. With a powerful set of intuitive tools on top of a world class search service, Bing will help you make smarter, faster decisions. We included features that deliver the best results, presented in a more organized way to simplify key tasks and help you make important decisions faster.

And features like cashback, where we actually give you money back on great products, and Price Predictor, which actually tells you when to buy an airline ticket in order to help get you the best price — help you make smarter decisions, and put money back in your pocket.

We sincerely hope that the next time you need to make an important decision, you’ll Bing and decide.

Thank you,
Bing Team, Microsoft  Read more...