New objective: get businesses to use the search engine.

Bing for Business

Microsoft is finally going to stop trying to make its Bing search engine happen — for consumers, anyway.

A decade after launching its search engine, Microsoft appears ready to acknowledge that the average internet user isn't interested in giving up Google — so it's now pivoting Bing to target businesses.

Happy Hunting

On Monday, Microsoft published a blog post announcing its rebranding of Bing as the "search engine for business." Mostly, this seems to mean taking a company's intranet — a private, internal computer network containing useful information and resources — and making it easier to navigate.

"Type in the address bar to search for people, using natural language, such as by their title, team name, and office location," Microsoft wrote in the blog post. "You can also search for office location, with answers that show floor plans for directions."

Developers Developers Developers

Microsoft goes hard on the idea that using Bing in this way will save workers time, citing McKinsey and Company research that found employees spend nearly 20 percent of their day looking for company information or trying to track down colleagues.

"Imagine getting a full day of work back each week to either be more productive or get more time back with your family," Microsoft wrote.

However, it fails to mention that the research is from 2012 — or how the many, many business-focused collaboration and communications tools that have hit the market since then might already address the problem it claims Microsoft Search in Bing could solve.

READ MORE: Microsoft's Bing and browser pivot to business [Axios]

More on search engines: Google "Terminated" Its Chinese Search Engine Plans


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