Steve Wozniak Impressed with Microsoft's Bing Search Engine

Steve Wozniak
Steve Wozniak

There are at least two Steves impressed with Microsoft's Bing search engine, Big Redmond's latest effort to become a serious player in the search engine business. Unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer during last week's D: All Things Digital conference, Bing's presentation impressed Steve Wozniak enough for him to say he's a "big fan," at least until he gets a chance to try it himself.

Mr. Wozniak made the comments to Yahoo!'s Tech Ticker shortly after the presentation, where he said, "I thought it was one of the most astounding software demos I've ever seen...The algorithms, the intelligence really impressed me."

The Woz admitted that he had a slightly cynical attitude before the presentation began, asking, "who needs another search engine?" What impressed him, he said, was Bing's ability to offer results that were actually relevant to the search.

"Every day in your life," he asked, "how many searches do you do? You might do ten, you might do a hundred, and you get the wrong information. You try to figure out where the right information is, and [in Bing] it was just coming up."

"When I heard the name: Bing bing bing! I thought, 'this is just such a corny presentation; it's going to be a lousy product; I'm never going to want to like it or try it. I don't need it, I have search engines. But no, I'm a big fan now."

Then he hedged, and added, "I'm a fan until I find out it's no good."