The new site, called Bing , has various new eatures intended to make everyday web searching slightly less chaotic. Bing will also atepmt to make it easier for people to buy things, make travel reservation, and find credible health information.

Historically, the search industry has been a rather dicey business for anyone whose name isn’t Google. Many companies, including Amazon.com Inc. and IAC/InterActiveCorp., and startups like Hakia, ChaCha and Cuil have tried to improve on the basic "10 blue links" format of search results, but Google has remained unstoppable.

Microsoft’s last search engine, Live Search, never really got off the ground, partly because the software maker failed to promote it. Although marketing doesn’t guarantee success, this time Microsoft isn’t taking any chances. Ad Age reported Microsoft plans to spend as much as $100 million on advertising Bing.

Microsoft has been trailing Google and Yahoo! for years. It’s market share was only 8.2 percent in April according to the research group comScore Inc. Google was used for 64.2 percent of queries, and Yahoo's share totaled 20.4 percent.

These numbers are important. Google's considerable profits are linked to its search dominance, because companies that want to place ads alongside search results will pay more to reach a wider audience. Conversely, Microsoft posted a quarterly loss in its online advertising business.

"We want to do better," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Thursday at The Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, Calif.

"There are times in our history where we've felt a little bit like Rocky," he continued, referring to the fictional underdog boxer. "It takes persistence in this stuff. You don't always get things right."

When asked why Microsoft chose "Bing," he said, "The name is short, it's easy to say, it works globally."
In attempt to challenge juggernaut Google, Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo! last year. After Yahoo! refused the $47.5 billion offer, Microsoft turned back to its own search engine to try and make improvements.

Ballmer reiterated Thursday that Microsoft is still interested in a search partnership with Yahoo!, and not an outright acquisition, but he didn't disclose any new details.

A Microsoft blog showed some of Bing's features back in March when the new site was known as "Kumo." The most obvious difference is a bar of links running down the left-hand side of Bing search results pages. Some searches — especially ones for celebrities or travel destinations — yield links to help narrow results into categories. For pro athletes, it might offer links for statistics and highlights. For Thailand, categories include weather and real estate.

Instead of listing related searches at the bottom of the page as Google does, Bing list related search terms on the left. It also keeps track of recent searches and gives people a way to e-mail links from that search history or post them on Facebook.

For some types of queries, Microsoft is molding Bing into a destination site, rather than portal to other sites. For airfare searches, Bing produces results from Farecast, a travel-comparison startup Microsoft acquired last year.

Shopping on Bing is a little like shopping on Amazon.com, with ways to narrow results by price, brand and the availability of free shipping, without ever leaving the search page.

Bing also tries to guide searchers to trustworthy medical information. Type in "chicken pox" or "tendinitis," and the first result is a Mayo Clinic article. In comparison, Google's top result for chicken pox comes from kidshealth.org; for tendinitis, it shows a Wikipedia article.

Forrester analyst Shar VanBoskirk said Bing won't bite into Google's search share because the Google habit is too hard to break. But people who have been using Yahoo as a secondary "information portal" may switch to Bing, she said.

"Yahoo won't have anything to make it stand out in comparison to either of the two other experiences," she said.

Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Yahoo's search strategy, said he was "completely baffled" by the claim that Bing "provides something we don't provide."

"It could be that people are reacting to the form and presentation, which is different, as opposed to the substance and information."

Microsoft doesn’t expect to overtake Google, said Mike Nichols, a general manager in the search group. But Microsoft does want to transform its also-ran search reputation.

"We want to capture a unique position in consumers' minds. They need to know why is it that they should use this product," Nichols said in an interview.

Matt Rosoff, an analyst for the research group Directions on Microsoft, praised the new features and said an extensive ad campaign gives Microsoft a chance to increase its share.

But "I have to wonder," he said, "whether users are really crying out for a new search engine."