Microsoft are ramping up their attack on Google to try and persuade people that their search engine is a strong and viable alternative.

Yesterday they released a wealth of new features which aim to turn Bing into more than just a simple search engine. Bing has been enhanced to offer viewers ways to watch TV shows, listen to music and play games – all in the confines of Bing's pages.

Rob Enderel, analyst at Enderele group said : “This has become a full-on war. I'm not too sure it can get any hotter, Microsoft is trying to make Bing ever more capable. The goal is to get you to live within their search engine and not go to any other sites, certainly not Google. The more you can do with Bing, the less likely you are to wander someplace else like Google. It's textbook customer containment.”

While many will think adding entertainment options seems somewhat frivolous, market research has shown that many users enjoy short diversions into other areas without the trouble of searching for video and game content. Microsoft's move might actually be a stroke of genius.

To this point Microsoft are struggling to gain marketshare, with Google still holding 71% of all US searches during April of this year. Bing statistics slipped by a few percent and they are still in third position behind Yahoo and Google.

Sadly, while alteratives are healthy for any market, we get the feeling that Google is just too engraved into public conciousness for many people to even consider a change.

KitGuru says: What do you think is Bing better than Google? have you even tried Bing? discuss in our forums.

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