Business Continuity Featured Article

Bing Functionality Comes to E-mail

By Amy Tierney, TMCnet Web Editor

Hotmail is getting a little “hotter” thanks to Bing, Microsoft’s (News - Alert) Bing search engine.

 

Microsoft Corp. announced yesterday it has added a new feature to Hotmail, which allows users to add images and video search results from Bing to their e-mail. The new tool, dubbed “quick add,” lets people add restaurant reviews, movie times, images, video and maps into their e-mail, Microsoft said.

 

The search results are streamed in the Hotmail window and can be added into outgoing e-mail messages or replies. The only noticeable drawback, if one exists, is that users can only pull in a few results. People who are looking for larger search results are sent to the Bing search engine.

 

Quick add is designed to help users accomplish tasks quicker within their e-mail environment, without the hassle of toggling back and forth between multiple windows, Microsoft said.

 

The new feature, which is available in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Canada, China, and India, is part of Microsoft’s effort to guide users toward its Bing search engine. By adding Bing functionality to Hotmail, the company is quietly introducing users to the search site.

 

And there’s a large audience of users. Hotmail is still the top Web mail provider on the Internet. According to Comscore, it has 343 million monthly users. Yahoo places second at 285 million, and Gmail finishes in third place with146 million.

 

Microsoft bought Hotmail in 1998, first renaming it MSN Hotmail, before rebranding it as Live Hotmail when it began to consolidate its online offerings under the Windows Live banner, according to InternetNews.com.

 

Early in its release, Bing appears to be gaining traction against its main rival Google. In a ComScore report, Microsoft’s search share rose to 11.1 percent in the first week of Bing’s launch compared to 9.1 percent the previous week. In addition, Bing surpassed Yahoo! as the No. 2 search engine in the U.S. and worldwide, according to another industry report.

 

Microsoft backed Bing’s launch with an $80 million to $100 million ad campaign, which includes TV spots and an online effort. The first ad, handled by agency JWT, broke two days after Microsoft launched the new search engine.

 

And it may be paying off. Market tracker Hitwise said that Bing’s share grew 25 percent in June, but it’s still a long way off from Google’s (News - Alert) numbers, according to USA Today. 

Hitwise said Google’s U.S. share was 74 percent last month, versus 16 percent for Yahoo and 5.25 percent for Bing, which was formerly MSN Live Search, according to the USA Today blog.

 

Amy Tierney is a Web editor for TMCnet, covering unified communications, telepresence, IP communications industry trends and mobile technologies. To read more of Amy's articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Amy Tierney