How to bring Bing to your desktop

Microsoft’s search engine, Bing is live and as we all know by now, the reception has been very good so far. You might have Google as your default browser in Firefox and Live Search in IE, so it’s time to change them to give Bing a try.

While it is too early to say if Bing will provide any real competition to Google, the Internet search giant, it is good to have a competitor in town. A monopoly is never good for consumers and having two giants battling it out in the Internet search arena will keep them both honest and make them bring more value to the users. If you are one of these users who have shifted to Bing, here’s a guide on how to add Bing to your desktop and desktop applications:

Add to Internet Explorer:

A Bing Search provider with search suggestions for Internet Explorer 8 is available on the Windows Internet Explorer 8 Add-On Gallery. Just navigate to it using IE 8 and click add to Internet Explorer. Search providers for weather, finance and traffic are also available for IE. Adding Bing as the default search provider for IE 8 will also set it up as an IE 8 accelerator which lets you highlight text and search it.

Add to Firefox:

Long Zheng created a search add-on for Firefox which can be accessible from here.

It also provides search suggestions although they are not as visually appealing as Internet Explorer.

Add to Windows 7:

Chakkaradeep has created a federated search connector for Windows 7 that will let you use Bing from within your Windows Explorer. You can download the connector from his blog.

Hope this post is helpful to you in judging Bing as a search engine for daily use. You can always switch back to Google in case you don’t like Bing’s search results.