Bing is a new search engine, or rather a "decision engine" that launched last weekend. Bing is really the new build of Microsoft's LiveSearch, with features designed to one-up Google and take some of it's marketshare, particularly in advertising. Bing is reportedly designed to hold visitors longer and expose them to more advertising.
Along with the new features comes a new "webmaster center." Or rather the old MSN webmaster center, just moved lock, stock and barrel, over to Bing: http://www.bing.com/webmaster/.
The webmaster welcome email talks about a "soon-to-be-updated suite of tools." So we'll look out for that. There's also a link to the Bing API, where you can find information and submit an application: http://www.bing.com/developers.
Finally, there is a Bing community: http://www.bing.com/community. It's PRETTY dead over there right now. If you have some spare time you could dominate the place. Or not.
So it looks like Bing is on it's way to matching some of Google's features. The danger in copying something that by the time you get it right, the original will have morphed into something else. We can hope that Bing lives up to becoming a "decision engine" and not just a Google me-too. I'm looking forward to seeing something original on Bing and in the Webmaster Center. Until then, we can just wait and hope.
