Bing may always be the little brother to Google’s massive search engine presence, but the tables may have turned for the 2016 Rio Olympics this summer.
With some major overhauls in their Windows operating system (including Cortana, virtual assistant) and other unique features in the search engine that others don’t offer, more users are opting for Bing than ever before — and this is now the case for the Rio Olympics. In the past, Bing gained some attention in the lime light for correctly predicting winner outcomes such as those at the FIFA World Cup and Oscar Awards. This month, the search engine is here to provide users with easily accessible scores for all 308 vents across 28 sports.
What Makes Bing Different From Google?
With a quick search under the keyword “Olympics,” “summer games,” or “Rio,” users will be met with scores and even video highlights of the sports you most want to keep tabs on. Although Google is offering a service similar to this, the difference is in Bing’s predictive algorithmic data.
Bing Predicts, as it’s creator Walter Sun calls it, exists to help users understand how and why the performing athletes either win or lose. Just as some people relied on a cute octopus for Super Bowl predictions, Microsoft wants users to rely on their search engine to guess the outcome of each Olympic event. “Bing will be predicting future highlights, as in the events tht promise to be the most dramatic, interesting, or important,” explains Matt Weinberger from Business Insider.
So what does this all mean? Basically, depending on what country you live in, you will be seeing different results that cater more towards the sports teams in your country and their predicted results in certain events. The best part about this algorithm is that it features artificial intelligence: it can learn what athletes become more popular throughout the 16 day period and adjust search results accordingly.
At the moment, we aren’t sure if Google is running an algorithm this complex for the Games, but it could be worth using Bing’s search engine at some point in the next 16 days!