Windows 7 is already shaping up to make us forgive Microsoft for all the wrongs of Vista, but we reckon it could be getting another string to its bow come launch: Bing integration, so you can search online and locally for any file you need.
Microsoft Bing, the big M’s new search and “decision” engine, was made official yesterday, and while we’re still reeling from the name, we like how the service pulls in relevant info around a search term. But could Bing be integrated into Windows 7? It’s not in the Windows 7 release candidate, naturally, but we think that Microsoft could be planning to combine its online and offline search functions in a new offering.
We asked Windows product manager Laurence Painell if Bing would feature in Windows 7, and we were told “No, currently.” Bearing in mind that Bing hasn’t even launched yet, that certainly doesn’t close any doors, and Painell went on to emphasise Windows 7’s Search Federation feature, which lets you mash up web site searches (Like Flickr, say) with your plain hard drive search. It’s a little bit like how the Palm Pre searches the web after the handset, but on the desktop, blurring the boundaries between cloud and computer even further.
With the Windows 7 final release still months away, there’s plenty of time for Microsoft to marry Bing into the Windows 7 desktop experience, and it’s something we’d love to see. Say you were searching for an image on your hard drive: with Bing powering it, if the picture wasn’t there, it could pull up snaps from across the web with matching filenames or tags.
Microsoft isn’t giving anything away just yet of course, but in the meantime, if you want to see what to expect from Bing, you can check out the official video below.
