Microsoft’s search engine Bing has said it will now add entries and links from the world’s top online fact list, the Encyclopedia Britannica, when certain key words are used.
A partnership between Microsoft and the publishers of the Encyclopaedia Britannica means that, for some concepts or terms, entries from the encyclopaedia will appear as web-links on Bing.
This is part of a strategy to counter-match Google’s ‘knowledge graph’, the BBC says.
Commenting on the new partnership, Microsoft said it is excited to announce a partnership with Encyclopedia Britannica to include Britannica Online answers “directly” in the Bing results page.
“We’re very excited to collaborate with Encyclopedia Britannica as it continues to strengthen its online presence, and hope you find these new answers valuable and helpful in your search for information. Give it a try and let us know what you think,” Microsoft said.
Earlier this year, the DJ reported the Encyclopaedia Britannica would stop offering a print edition, due to costs and the time taken to prepare a print edition set against the acceleration of knowledge.
Even with the shift to an e-book format, the Encyclopaedia Britannica remains the oldest English-language reference work still being produced. The fact list was first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Last month’s launch of Google’s knowledge base, experts say, may offer something a little different.
According to Search Engine Land, the new functionality “is being used to provide popular facts” about people, places and things alongside Google’s traditional results.
It in addition allows search engine giant Google to move toward a new way of searching for “entities” the words describe.
It remains a wait and see situation whether the new partnership would tilt the balance between the two rival search engines.
Bing has steadily picked up market share in Africa since its introduction in 2009 with the gains mostly credited to have come at the expense of Yahoo.
Following a strategy to save money rather than fight Google, Yahoo in 2010 relied extensively on Microsoft’s Bing for most of its search results. The partnership enabled Bing to attain an improved market share in Africa.
This may be so, but Microsoft still appears to have a heavy task to win back investors who seem to be convinced the company has lost its competitive edge to Google. In Africa, Google Inc still emerges as most powerful search engine player.
With an estimated 900,000,000 monthly users globally, Google also currently stands high as the world’s most used Internet search engine compared to Bing’s 165,000,000, as of May 2012.
Yahoo has been struggling far more than Microsoft in recent years. As of April, Google commanded some 81 percent market share. Bing had about 9 percent, while Yahoo some 7 percent.
In Africa, the Internet and mobile devices are now viewed as more forceful franchises with greater future potential than the PC business that Microsoft has cashed in on since the 1980s — with Windows alongside its Office suite of software.
Since August 2004 when Google went public, it has experienced more than 6-fold increase in stock while Microsoft’s shares have dipped by 2 percent.
Then again, since Apple released world’s first iPhone in June 2007, its stock has more than tripled. Microsoft’s shares have however backtracked 11 percent. The budge enabled Apple to surpass Microsoft as the world’s most valuable technology company.
