If you’ve just downloaded a new Web browser, you must be eager to start surfing the realm of the world wide web. But the first thing you find on the screen is beautiful natural scenery and a search bar with the words “Bing” in big, blue letters. You may be wondering, Is Bing the web browser?
No, Bing is not a web browser. Instead, it’s a search engine, a tool you use to find information on the internet. Microsoft owns Bing, and it’s been around since 2009. It’s the default search engine for Windows 11 and Microsoft Edge, Microsoft’s official web browser, and it competes with Google.
Web browsers and search engines are two different things, but they work together. A browser lets you view websites and use the internet. A search engine helps you find other sites based on the keywords you enter. Let’s find out more about Bing and how search engines work.
What is Bing?
Bing is a search engine that helps you find websites, images, videos, and other information on the internet. In other words, it’s a website you can use to find other websites!
You can think of it like a library catalog: it doesn’t have all the information, but it can help you find what you’re looking for.
To use Bing, you must go to the website Bing.com and type in what you’re looking for in the search bar at the middle of the page.
For example, if you want to find a website about cats, you would type “cats” into the search bar. Then, click Search. You should see a list of websites, pictures, videos, and other information about cats.
You can also reverse image search on Bing. That means you can take a picture (or choose one from your computer) and search for websites where that picture appears.
Right now, Bing is the second biggest search engine in the world, after Google. It works with 70 different languages and has over 100 billion monthly users. In addition, Bing has some unique features you may not find on other search engines.
One of those is “Bing Rewards”—a program that gives you points for using Bing, which you can redeem for donations to non-profits of your choice.
How Long Has Bing Been Around?
Then-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled Bing on May 28, 2009. The search engine went live worldwide on June 3, 2009. However, it wasn’t an original product.
In fact, Bing was a rebranding of Microsoft’s older search engines, MSN Search and Live Search. So, while the name “Bing” is barely a teen, the roots of the search engine go back much further.
Since its humble beginnings, Bing has slowly been closing the gap between itself and industry leader Google. It’s a default search engine on many devices, including Windows and Xbox. In addition, Yahoo, another popular search engine, now uses Bing to power its searches.
How Does a Search Engine Work?
Search engines are essentially just extensive databases that keep track of all the websites on the internet. So when you type a keyword into a search engine, it looks through all of the websites in its database to find the ones that are most relevant to your keyword.
Search engines use “web crawlers” (bots or spiders) to do this. These are teams of digital crawlers that scour the internet, looking for new websites to add to the database.
When a web crawler finds a new website, it “crawls” through the site, looking at all the different pages and information on it. It then creates an index, an extensive list of all the keywords on that website.
So the next time someone types a keyword into the search engine, the search engine will look at its index and show the websites that are most relevant to that keyword.
Good quality search engines, like Bing, also rank the websites according to quality. So it shows the most relevant websites with the best information at the top. This, in turn, gives users like you the best possible experience.
The Difference Between a Search Engine and a Browser
A browser and a search engine are two different things that serve different purposes. A browser is a software program installed on your device (like Chrome, Safari, or Firefox). It lets you access the internet and use different websites.
A search engine is a website you use to find other websites (like Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo). A search engine is required because there are too many websites to track them all yourself! So you ask a search engine to help you find what you’re looking for.
Web browsers also let you do many different things on the internet that you do not need a search engine for. For example, you can use a browser to check your emails, do banking, play games, install applications, and more.
You can also use a browser to access websites without a search engine, but you cannot use a search engine without a browser!