One of the defining aspects of Cortana is the ability to interact with the personal digital assistant in a way that feels natural. To build on this type of interaction, Bing has announced an update to its service today that brings a similar level of functionality to the search service.
What the Bing team has announced today is a text-based application for searches that has undertones of Cortana's functionality. For example, if you search "who is the President?" and your next search is "who is his wife?", Bing will know that you are looking for Michelle Obama based on your prior search. The idea is that you can ask questions to Bing in the same way that you would during a conversation where prior context is key to understanding the task that you are trying to accomplish.
It's small features like this that has allowed Bing to make small gains against Google, and with their constant roll-out of improvements, it would make sense that they will keep chipping away from Google's massive lead in the search market.
This update is one of many that will make its way into Bing, and Microsoft said that the road to be able to introduce this type of feature has been a long journey, but the labor is now starting to create the fruit that we see today. Expect to see more features like this in the near future as Bing works to differentiate itself from Google by finding new ways to make searching feel more natural.
Source: Microsoft
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