When it comes to different search engines, Microsoft's Bing has been in second place for a long time - some would say that it's not even a blip on Google radar. Sure, it's part of Microsoft's media empire, but no one would go out of their way to use the search engine itself: it's just not as fast or efficient as the competition, plain and simple. It's second-tier at best, and nearly broken at worst.
That isn't to say that Bing is entirely useless, though. While it may have its fair share of trouble when it comes to actually finding things, the engine is surprisingly good at predicting the outcome of big events. Take the Academy Awards: Bing didn't just make a few lucky guesses, the search engine predicted over 80% of the winners at Hollywood's biggest award show last night.
Although, to be honest, it wasn't exactly Bing doing all the work, and much of the research was managed by one man: David Rothschild, a Microsoft researcher. Rothschild, who used his prediction model alongside Bing, managed to correctly predict 84% of last night's winners - meaning he only missed four of the 24 total awards. When it came to the biggest awards of the night - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress - all of the predictions were correct.
It's not as if Bing just got lucky this year, either. The search engine and its engineers correctly predicted an astonishing 21 of 24 awards during the 2014 Academy Awards, and nearly 80% in 2013. On top of award shows, the prediction engine also correctly called the outcome to several sporting events, such as World Cups, Super Bowls and international soccer results - when it comes to these kind of predictions, Bing is one of the best.
Maybe someday, Bing's search engine results will be as good as its Oscar predictions.
