Bing's ever-growing alliances

Who will win?

It's good to have allies and Microsoft's Bing is ensuring it has as many companies on side as possible in a bid to defeat Google by providing the most relevant search results.

Since Microsoft launched Bing as a direct rival to Google in order to decrease the internet giant's market share, the company has been securing itself a bunch of alliances in order to get the edge over Google. These have included securing both Twitter and Facebook to provide updates for Bing and launching a Bing Twitter search to enable users to look for up-to-the-second tweets.

Today has seen Bing score another hit against Google by teaming up with Wolfram Alpha, a web tool once hailed as a rival to Google. Instead of displaying a list of links like your average search engine, Wolfram Alpha aims to answer questions directly and has been described as a "computational knowledge engine".

It does this by grabbing raw data from public and licensed databases, enabling users to look up simple facts or research data sets. In order so it doesn't grab any spurious information from the Net, the Wolfram Research team chooses where the system gets the information from.

Has the tide turned?

Microsoft are hoping that Wolfram Alpha will be able to enhance Bing's results in areas such as nutrition, health and mathematics. The two sides are equally positive about the partnership with the Wolfram team, saying that the new partnership with Bing would allow Microsoft to access "tens of thousands of algorithms and trillions of pieces of data" to incorporate into its results. Meanwhile, Microsoft said that the nutritional and fitness data in Wolfram Alpha could be of use to the "roughly 90 million Americans" who choose to diet to each year.

Speaking to the BBC, Microsoft said "When you search for specific food items on Bing, you'll get a nutrition quick tab that allows you to learn more about it."

"You also get a nutrition facts label at the bottom of the results page that summarises all information on that food item in a very familiar and friendly format."

With Microsoft integrating Twitter into their search results before Google, and having a partnership with Facebook, Bing would appear to have the edge in terms of technology partners, however Google should not be discounted.

Google have hit back with two recent announcements. A partnership with MySpace and their new SocialSearch product, which allows users to get personalised results from people within their social network (via Google Profile). The former means any music related search (by artist, album name etc) would present the user with options to buy, download or listen to the relevant music. If Google can make an impact in the music scene it may not only have Microsoft worried but also Apple.

It could go any way at present, but Google still holds a majority market share and may already be too powerful, negating any need for technical partnerships. Although if Bing continues in the positive direction it has started, we could see a distinctive user base making that switch.

Relevant articles:

Microsoft/Yahoo pact to challenge Google? | Google in Twitter Search deal | Google's record quarterly profits

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