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Microsoft Releases Bing without a "Search Provider"?

Posted by Andy Edinborough on June 1, 2009

As my first post on my new blog, I'm pleased to say that Microsoft has finally released Bing, a "decision engine" that offers Google real competition.  But did they seriously just release a search-engine product with no Search Provider add-in for Internet Explorer?  Seriously?  This is a huge disappointment; I actually really like Bing.

Ironically, I was able to add Bing as my default search provider to Chrome, and Firefox very easily, but my only option for IE was to set it as my homepage.  I don't want to change my homepage.  I just want to set it as my default search provider...  I could write my own, but I've got to honest, I'm lazy and that sounds like a lot of work.

--- UPDATE ---
I received a tweet back from @bing saying that they're working on it.  I'm sure they want to do something fancy, but something that works is better than nothing at all.  I used Fiddler in combination with Firefox to find that they've already written an Open Search Description XML file.  It can be found at http://www.bing.com/s/osd3.xml.  I have added it to the <head/> of my site so that you can now add Bing as a search provider for your browser.

--- UPDATE ---
While bing.com still has not published an Open-Search XML file, it is available at MSN.com.