Kumo - Inside a Microsoft Beta

Welcome everyone and to another LinkedIn article - if you haven't heard of Kumo you aren't alone. It was the beta name for what we all know now as Bing! I've taken some screen shots and share below a bit about the history and 7 Bing tips!

ONE: Bing was tested internally as Kumo. For what felt like a really long time. As an employee at the time, we had internal access to what replaced Live Search. Kumo was the url only on the Microsoft intranet (Kumo came from the Japanese word for spider (蜘蛛; くも, kumo) as well as cloud (雲; くも, kumo), referring to the manner in which search engines "spider" Internet resources to add them to their database, as well as cloud computing (thanks Wikipedia!)

https://web.archive.org/web/*/Bing.com check out the Internet Wayback machine for how Bing took over from Live Search in 2009! It was really cool to see a different background every day.

TWO You can use site: to limit the results in Bing! https://www.bing.com/search?q=surface+laptop+3+site%3Amicrosoft.com - this will return information about Surface Laptop 3 but only from Microsoft.com websites (except for ads), so now reviews from CNET, offers from Best Buy, Amazon or other retailers (maybe the Microsoft Store since their site is part of the Microsoft.com domain), videos on YouTube, Blogs, 3rd party Microsoft sites, etc. This can be used with any search to limit the scope. Here's another example - maybe you are looking for a download for your HP Printer. You are pretty sure a real driver would come from something.hp.com, you can search bing for the model of your printer and site:hp.com to ensure you only receive links from that domain: https://www.bing.com/search?q=deskjet203050%20site%3Ahp.com

?THREE: You can limit Bing results to a certain extention. Need a Microsoft Teams PowerPoint? Those three words will likely get you PowerPoint results, Microsoft Teams articles, Microsoft PowerPoint offers, and all sorts of other stuff. If you put filetype:PPT or filetype:PPTX after "Microsoft Teams" all the results (with the exception of ads) will be PowerPoint files

FOUR: (below is another photo from Bing's beta, Kumo) Most of the backgrounds on Bing can be downloaded and used as wallpaper. You can download most of the daily images used on Bing by clicking on the description in the lower right corner and then choosing Download today's image. You can also use the < left arrow at the bottom right to go back 7 days if you just learned this trick and wish you had saved the beautiful Colorado landscape from last year (in 2019) - there are some archive sites and even ways to search bing for bing images, but 7 day is as far back as this will take you. The whole week's worth of beautiful photos are all available for download. If one isn't because of copywrite, it will say something like "not available for download".

FIVE: Bing is an acronym. This is probably the best kept secret. Send me a message on LinkedIn and I'll give you the answer! Seriously- there is a good joke there (get in touch or possibly search Bing for the answer! There is an app for Bing as well on mobile - you should try it.

SIX: Sign up and earn Bing Rewards. In the upper left if you use a work or personal account with Bing, you will probably see an option with your total of Bing Rewards or an offer to sign up and start collecting them. I'm using my corporate Microsoft account, so I can sign up and earn rewards good for real world perks like Amazon gift cards, Xbox gift cards, etc.

SEVEN: Automatically hands off search to your enterprise (if you choose to do so) with Microsoft Search (formerly Bing for Business). I searched for Surface. This could mean just about anything, but notice the first link is from our internal SharePoint online and then has people, groups, sites, files and even Teams results for me from our INTERNAL and OFFICE 365 RESOURCES! Not just external results. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/itshowcase/Increasing-employee-productivity-with-Microsoft-Search-in-Bing-and-PowerApps Read more about it on Microsoft's IT Showcase (and visit them at Microsoft Ignite this November in Orlando Florida!)