Bing

Maybe Microsoft thinks the U.S. Department of Justice is about to green-light Google's acquisition of travel software market leader ITA Software and figures it should bulk up.

Someone needs to explain the whole "mobile ecosystem" thing to Steve Ballmer.

Search engine Bing, and even Yahoo, are providing users with more accurate searches than their rival Google, according to a report out this week.

Google very publicly called out Microsoft's Bing search engine--claiming that it copies its search results from Google. The initial charge has been followed by a back and forth exchange of insults and accusations, but one thing that is sort of lost in the melodrama is that Google apparently considers Bing to be a serious threat.

An interesting “sting” operation carried out by Google’s search engine team appears to show that Microsoft’s Bing is copying some of Google’s search results.

Hey, all you ad networks and other sleazy data collectors, don't even think of misusing the personal information of Facebook users. That's for Facebook and Facebook alone to do!

OK, this gets extremely confusing because the "facts" have changed as the story has evolved over the past 24 hours, but here goes...

Microsoft announced a set of updates to its Bing search engine Wednesday, among them changes to the way search results are presented, enhancements to its "social search" capabilities, and some cool additions to its mobile app for Android and iPhone.

Microsoft and Facebook announced that they're teaming up to make search more social.

If Microsoft Bing looks a trifle different this morning, it's because the search engine's design team says it wants to make finding safe, dependable casual games and sleuthing for mainstream video game cheats and tips easier. I took the refinements for a test-drive, and after poking around the new interface, I can say they've pretty much nailed the former, but flubbed the latter.

Google search engine users were surprised this morning to find a colorful background picture serving as "wallpaper" on the main Google.com web page, just like Microsoft's Bing search engine page has. The move feels like an error to me.