Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) Counters Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) ‘Answers’ With Bing Distill

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has been working on a new project since the beginning of the year, which involves selecting, organizing and presenting human answers for its new service – Bing Distill. Here it may be noted that the word “distill” stands for extracting the essential meaning or only the most important aspect of something.

Under the new service offered by Microsoft, people can use general knowledge in order to answer questions asked by others on Bing. People can also give their own inputs in order to frame the best answers for the community as a whole. Also, there is a facility by which people can edit their own as well others’ answers on the website.

Microsoft had made a similar attempt long back and had come up, with “Windows Live QnA”. Through it, the company had basically tried to counter Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) Answers Service. However, the concept was not very successful at that point of time. It is expected that, with Bing Distill, Microsoft will able to turn over a new leaf.

The objective of the company behind the service is stated on its website – by joining the community of Bing Distill, one will be able to answer questions that millions of people are asking throughout the world. The website is still not open for free public use.

However, if anyone is interested, he can log on to www.bing.com/distill by using his Microsoft account and request for an invite from the company. This is quite a simple process, which will ask your details including your e-mail address, some information about yourself and also the areas subjects in which one would be interested in.

There is no official confirmation, with regard to the date of the official launch of the website. However, the company may soon launch the website in beta mode.