Microsoft launches Bing app for Android via Verizon Wireless

Microsoft introduced its first official Bing search application optimized for archrival Google's Android mobile operating system. The free application--launching via Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ)--features image-based search tools alongside voice-enabled queries, the latter optimized for "instant answers" related to movies, stock quotes, flight status and local business listings. Bing for Android also competes directly with Google Maps, automatically identifying the user's location and supplying touchscreen-enabled driving and walking directions to nearby points of interest. The app additionally features the Bing image of the day on its homepage, complete with clickable hotspots boasting related trivia.

Bing for Android follows about nine months after Microsoft extended the search engine to Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone. Microsoft first expanded Bing to the mobile platform in June 2009, about a week after unveiling the search engine as the successor to its Live Search solution. Late last year, Verizon Wireless installed Bing as the default search option on some of its BlackBerry smartphones, a move spinning out of a five-year search partnership the operator inked with Microsoft in early 2009.

For more on Bing for Android:
- read this Bing Community blog entry

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