The holiday season is nearly upon us and Microsoft has signaled it wants to be the search engine for Christmas this year.
A new commercial, released earlier this week and spotted first by the folks at LiveSide, highlights the familiar "search overload syndrome" that Microsoft referred to in its first Bing commercials in June when Bing officially launched to the world. Since the launch of Bing, Microsoft has managed to snatch 10.7% market share with 1.1 billion searches in August alone.
The advert has a holiday season feel as a young child visits Santa to explain his wish list for Christmas. The boy wants an Xbox 360 and the immediate response from Santa and his helpers is a mix of facts and non-helpful information. The tag-line is "what has search overload done to the holidays? Find a cure at Bing.com". Microsoft is clearly sending out a message that it wants people to try Bing for the holiday season this year.
Bing is Microsoft"s overhauled Live Search, now with a range of new features that warrants it the description "decision engine", as opposed to the regular "search engine". You can easily search videos, websites and filter them to show reviews or other links. You can also use it to compare things such as flight information, maps or different shopping websites. If you"re interested in all the various search options you can perform, check out Neowin"s hands on from earlier this year.