Wow. I just spent the last hour noodling around for different stuff, searching for air fares, doing some shopping on Bing. It's actually really pretty nice.

Wow. I just spent the last hour noodling around for different stuff, searching for air fares, doing some shopping on Bing. It's actually really pretty nice. Thoughts: Bing shopping is much better than Froogle ever was. They are pushing the "cash back" program pretty hard, and it will probably gain some traction. Bing Video really doesn't show much YouTube content. That gives a bunch different search results, which is kinda nice. The video preview is rather helpful. Bing airfare shopping is now going to be my first stop for airfare shopping. Really, really nice. Bing is now competing with Orbitz, Priceline, Kayak, and doing a great job at it. Bing image search is okay. Image search sucks in general, but it's nice to have a third source for image searches (flikr being the other). Bing maps are useable. Google maps is the clear winner. Had anybody else aside from Microsoft just launched this product, it would have been nothing short of amazing. People here would be very excited. Google will still be #1, but at least now they have a serious competitor. Microsoft just learned a whole bunch about making data centers and making server operating systems run in large clusters. That's going to influence their server OS game in a big way for the better.