Redmond, Washington — After cannibalizing Live Search and additional brands attached to the moniker utilized for Microsoft’s former search engine, Bing now swallowed MSN Video. Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled Bing Video, a re-launch of MSN Video that derives content from sites like Hulu, MSN, and YouTube. The site features news, entertainment shows, sports, music, comedy and clips and trailers from movies.
Through the union between Bing and MSN Video search to incorporate high-quality MSN content, essentially rebranding the old MSN service under the brand umbrella for its search/decision engine. With the update, you will be able to access videos from Hulu, MSN, ABC, and Youtube directly from Bing’s video search page.
“Beginning today and steadily rolling out over the next few days Bing videos will provide a new unified online video hub that delivers a comprehensive, organized, and high-quality video experience. This change will combine the powerful search experience of Bing, with the expertise of MSN video all into one destination,” revealed Kristin Meldahl — Bing. “With the New Bing Video you can now access videos from across the web, MSN’s array of high-quality videos, and videos from sites such as Hulu, ABC, and Youtube. Bing videos viewing options are nearly endless.”
Here is a screenshot of the new Bing Video:
Adam Sohn, director of Bing at Microsoft, says that when a user performs a search on Bing for a video, Bing Videos takes them instantly to results that enables them to view the video right on Bing.
Microsoft added a “dim the lights” feature currently available on Hulu that darkens the area encompassing the video; in addition, a share option that allows people to send the videos to friends and family. “Most Recent” and “Most Popular” sort features are available, too.
The main site combines short clips from news and entertainment shows, as well as links to full-length TV shows, news, sports, music, comedy, and movies. The movies section does not appear to offer entire movies, but clips, trailers, and interviews about the films.
The main site, for instance, at present includes clips of Susan Boyle on “Stars,” a video of a girl who got a surprise visit from her deployed dad, the trailer from the “Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus,” and a video about colonizing Mars.
The Music division, for example, offers a “Queue” feature that allows people line up the tunes or interviews they want to hear from artists, such as Leona Lewis, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson and Taylor Swift. The music section is further divided into Pop, Rock, Alternative, Country, among other genres.
The TV section covers a “Most Watched” section, which currently includes episodes of “FlashForward,” “Glee,” “NCIS,” “The Office,” and “Survivor: Samoa.” Another section separates the content by network, while a third features clips from cable channels like National Geographic and Bravo.
The site is rolling out now and should be fully available by mid-November.
“With over 900+ T.V. shows in Bing Videos, I cannot resist to lay hands on my favorite shows, discover new favorites and watch right from my laptop,” Meldahl wrote in a blog post. “We have gone deeper with organization, making it easy to find your favorite episode, even from last season.”
Check out this video of Rob Bennett, General Manager of MSN Network Programming, talking about the new video connection between Bing and MSN.
| Video: New Bing Video on MSN |