44 InformationToday
October 2009 www.infotoday.com
Database Review
Bing: Contender
or Just Bling?
by MICK O’LEARY |
W
henever a new contender for Google’s title as Top Search Engine
appears, the story plays out the same way. The new search en-
gine (SE) gets lots of attention for doing something that Google
does not. (For example, I have covered A9.com, Clusty, MS Search, KartOO,
Ask.com, and Wolfram Alpha in the past issues of IT.) But soon after, the
contender—or rather pretender—slips in market share or into obscurity. As
Absolute Incorporates Geofencing Technology
in a title fight, you can’t just edge the champ; you have to win decisively. Absolute Software Corp. introduced geofencing capabilities in its line of Compu-
trace IT asset management systems. The geofencing feature allows IT managers to
The latest contender is Bing (www.bing.com), a would-be Google killer
from Microsoft. So far the story is playing out according to form. The new
SE—and this one is very deep-pocketed—gets lots of publicity and generally
underinformed press comment. It’s supposed to be radically new; Microsoft
calls Bing a “decision engine” instead of a plain old SE. But does Bing have
the right stuff to take out Google? keep tabs on the physical location of hardware, set virtual perimeters through an
online map interface, and receive alerts when a device is removed from its defined
space. In the event of theft, the Computrace Software Agent can gather and report
What’s the Right Stuff? data on the device’s whereabouts to aid in recovery or be remotely instructed to delete
What will it take to knock off Google? It would probably take some com- data from the device to protect sensitive information.
bination of three t