Bing is like the forgotten lost sibling of the search engine world. Sure, it is important to some people, but most don’t even know it is there. Microsoft’s search engine has seen its fair share of problems too, like the recent scandal of the racist results it was showing to otherwise ordinary search queries. There is one key factor, however, that marks Bing out as superior to other search engines, including Google. Bing is an excellent tool for performing image searches.
It makes sense for the software giant to leverage its superiority in the image search field and that is exactly what Microsoft is doing. Microsoft is adding Bing’s image searching powers to Windows 10’s native Photos app.
You can now use Microsoft Photos to search for similar images on Bing
Microsoft’s latest addition to its Photos app is very useful. It allows you to search for similar images to those you have on your device with a simple click of a button. This could be useful if you’re trying to find information about the subject of a certain photo you have, or maybe see what an image would look like from different angles.
The new feature is very easy to use, too. All you have to do to perform a search for a similar image is open Microsoft Photos and select the image you want to search for. Then you need to right-click the image to open a drop-down menu and the new feature is found at the bottom of this menu. Clicking Search for similar images on Bing will open a dialog box asking for permission for Bing to use the image to improve its image processing services. Agreeing to this will then send the image to Bing and you’ll be shown a results page, on your default web browser, of similar images Bing has found.
Once you’ve done this, you’ll be able to click on the search results to see the web pages the returned images are connected to. In this way, you might be able to put a bit of context to the images you have on your device.
The new “Search for similar images features” is live now, but it is still a little rough around the edges. This is likely to change over the next few weeks as Microsoft refines it further and improves its functionality.
Although Microsoft is ahead of the curve with its image searching capabilities, it still a little behind in all areas. In particular, Microsoft is only now starting to introduce automatic people tagging to its Photos app. Google Photos has had this facility for a while.
All-in-all these two new features add some serious clout to Microsoft Photos, turning it into strong competition for the Google offering.