Foodies Are Key To Microsoft Bing! Win

Microsoft Bing! has incorporated recipes into its search engines, plugging into ever popular food culture and created a simple, yet effective salvo against Google and Yahoo!.

Type in, say, "chicken soup", and Bing! will deliver the usual search results along with a "chicken soup recipes" link. The Bing! link gives recipes from various web sources with name, description, source, calories, fat, and user ratings. The items listed can be filtered through Bing!

Since neither Google or Yahoo! have comparable services, Bing! has the opportunity to be the search engine of choice for foodies. As of January 29, 2010, one of every four books on the Amazon top 25 is about eating. Google is reportedly in talks to buy foodie guide Yelp for $500 million. Food is hot right now.

Microsoft's next move should be improving the food interface with more recipes - - don't expect to find "chicken tetrazzini" on there now - - as well as links to video and audio recipes. With more backing, Bing! could be a virtual Hulu for home cooks.

Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/sfllaw/ / CC BY-SA 2.0