Disclaimer: I chair the 2020 trust which has is receiving 1.2 mkillion from Microsoft over 3 years to run a programme. That's why I have waited for someone else to review their asearch engine in a relatyively even handed way. I think david Pogue qualifies with Bing, the Imitator, Often Goes Google One Better

At first, Bing is pretty much Google: ... a search box; a menu that offers to complete what you’re typing; and inconspicuous links to Images, Videos, News, Shopping and Maps.

Once you hit Enter, however, you can’t help noticing Bing’s more concerted effort to get you answers faster. To minimize the clicking, the hunting, the dead ends.

[...] Point to any search result without clicking; a pop-up balloon shows you the first few paragraphs of text on it. Without leaving the results list, you know if it’s going to be helpful. Simple and irresistible.

[...] if you search for a celebrity’s name, that space offers an attractive table of common-sense links: News, Movies, Quotes, Biography and Images. When you search for a sports team, you see Schedule, Tickets, Stadium, History and Wallpaper. When you search for a medical condition, that table offers Causes, Remedies, Treatment, Prognosis and News.Aren’t those almost always the answers you’re really looking for?

That panel also lists Related Searches, which require one click and zero thinking. If you searched for “barbecue,” it offers Barbecue Grills, Barbecue Recipes, Barbecue Ribs and so on.

Finally, the same panel maintains your search history, to save you the trouble of reformulating your quests.

Yes, that left-side panel creates more clutter; Google’s appeal has always been its sparse, streamlined look. But it’s well worth the space.

Both Bing and Google offer an Image Search page ... On Bing, however, the results page scrolls forever — you don’t have to keep clicking Next, Next, Next. More photos fit in less space, too, since all the cluttery text details (pixel size, file name, originating Web site) are hidden until you point at a thumbnail. And you can adjust the thumbnail size.

Options on the left-side panel let you limit the image results in various ways: by size, by graphic type, even “just faces” or “head & shoulders” shots. Amazing.

As on Google, you can search for videos. But on Bing, you can preview the results far more efficiently. Just point to a thumbnail (without clicking) in the search results, and the video begins to play back sample segments, seven seconds at a time, right there on the thumbnail.
[...] When you’re shopping for a particular product — “Canon SD870,” for example — the top result is a tidy chart, summarizing everything you’d want to know: a photo, price, average rating, and even a Photo Quality graph.

When you search for a flight, a similar table offers the cheapest fare (“$259 JFK>LAX”) and links to other deals. An icon tells you whether prices are about to go up, down or stay the same. That detail is brought to you by Farecast.com, which Microsoft bought last year for $115 million.

Unfortunately, these features don’t always work. ... (Microsoft points out that the summary table appears more often if you click the Shopping link before you search. But come on, who has time for that?)

[...] Google is still way ahead on other kinds of searches, like movie showtimes ... Google also wins with maps and driving directions; it offers features like Street View (actual photos along your route) and the ability to drag the colored route line to alternative roadways with your mouse (to avoid a traffic jam or take a favorite shortcut).On the other hand, Bing wins on traffic searches (such as “traffic nyc”), where you get a color-coded map of current traffic speeds without having to dig. It also excels with company name searches; the 800 number for customer service appears right in the results list.

[...] People won’t start dumping Google en masse; Google is a habit. Everyone already knows how to work it, and it may be built right into your Web browser. But if you value your time, you should give Bing a fling.

As tools such as Twitter and FriendFeed and Google's Wave get real time updates the next round of what we call search will become something rather different, discovery linked to whatever we are doing online at the time. It will be interesting to see whether Bing heads that way too.

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