Bing, You've Done Well.
I don't have any problems with Bing. That sounds like a backhanded compliment, but it's definitely meant as a kudo. For Bing, Dethroning the Big G is a Gargantuan task.
David Pogue at the New York Times has a great video review of Bing. He talks a lot about the consumer-ish features, which I didn't really pay attention to. Yes, the Ajaxy previews are a great feature. The image searches feel a lot cleaner to me as well. I don't really care for all the text cruft when looking for an image. If I want a 'big'-ish image, I'll choose the size option from the left menu. Still, it's in Bing's interest to give value to the searches that most humans are doing: travel, local and consumer-ish type things.
As a Developer…
…all I really needed to know is why I was getting 'Cannot implicitly convert type 'System.Xml.XmlDocument' to 'System.Xml.XmlNode'' when trying to pass XmlDocument back and forth between web services. (hey, I didn't specify XmlNode, but that's what gets auto-generated in your Web Service's Reference.cs!) Oh look, first result!
A month ago, I took the Bing 1 Month Challenge. There were a handful of times that I felt I might be able to do better in Google, and about half those times, I found what I was looking for in Google. The majority of searches though, Bing provided me with the results that I need. Basically it never left me hangin'. Who would have thought that a rebranded, remixed and Ajax'd MSN Search would have turned out so well?
The guys on the Herding Code Podcast pretty much panned it a month ago on Herding Code Episode 49 . I am much more optimistic for Bing's future. I'll be keeping it as my default search engine.
Celebrate Good Times
Great job, @Bing Team! Kudos!
