The Bing search engine has recently tied up with the Encyclopedia Britannica. Search results on Bing will now provide references from the Encyclopedia where relevant.
Summaries from the Encyclopedia Britannica will be included in the Bing search results whenever possible.
Information from Encyclopaedia Britannica on Bing
This news was communicated by Microsoft through a blogpost. Whenever the Bing search results are to use information from the Encyclopedia Britannica, the users would see a small box summarising salient facts about the topic. Other sources of information such as such as Wikipedia, Qwiki and Freebase would also be linked to this entry.
This information is likely to be welcomed by those who lamented the recent decision by the Encyclopedia Britannica to stop printing its editions in future.
This move by Microsoft seems to be their answer to Google’s “knowledge graph” which provides consolidated information on a given subject.
While Bing is using information from well known sources of reference, Google has consolidated the information from their vast data base. Only time will tell which of the two systems appeals more to users.
