Microsoft’s search engine Bing has undergone some updates, which make it more entertainment friendly. It now offers a number of new features that work by simply entering a search query from the home page. This update delivers plenty of great resources for those who prefer entertainment related information and resources.

The main new features include:

Music – Zune Music is now available directly within Bing. You can easily search for Lyrics as well, as Bing now stores lyrics to over 5 million tracks. Music search is even easier now, as Bing users can listen to 30 second samples of each and every song stored in the Bing databases.

Television - Hulu, CBS and Viacom have partnered with Bing to provide television episodes and videos that play directly through Bing. This video collection has over 20,000 episodes of television content and is growing every day. This is only the start of the video/TV entertainment centre, as there are plans to add more networks and other supported video feeds.

Gaming – Over 100 casual games are now available free of charge or on membership basis through Bing. This allows users to have some great fun in single player games or play with friends/other players online. Cheat codes for hardcore gamers are also provided through the advanced Bing search.

Along with the entertainment content update, Bing runs faster than ever and can provide results on everything you need to make a decision on. Microsoft is trying to outdo Google by providing new resources and several features that are not provided by other search engines. There are still plenty of improvements that Bing has in store for the next series of updates.

Microsoft is moving aggressively towards trying to be an entertainment portal, but the problem remains is that the experience is fragmented. There is Bing, Zune, Xbox 360, Kinect, Windows, Windows Mobile, and I am sure some more other products that have similar features. The problem Microsoft has is a usability one. I want to be able to go flawlessly from one ‘module’ to the other to the other. For example, when I am done playing on my Xbox I want it to show on my Windows desktop so I can easily resume playing from there. Microsoft has a lot of work to do on the platform integration and it will be interesting to see what happens in the future.

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