Microsoft’s Bing search engine wasn’t scheduled to go live to the general public until Wednesday, but as of Monday morning it’s already up and running, greeting prospective searchers with a home page picture of hot air balloons, a toolbar with an “add Bing to your browser” option, and a tag line that says “Live search is evolving. Welcome to Bing.”

“We are introducing a new level of organisation to search results, and our differentiator will be the best results for query,” stated Satya Nadella, senior vice- president of online services division at Microsoft in a press conference.

The new search engine is designed to allow the computer giant to compete with Google, which runs the most popular search engine in the world. Search engines are a highly lucrative line of business and one Microsoft has never been able to conquer Bing’s main search page also lists broad category searches like shopping, news, maps and travel.

Usenet newsgroups dealing with MSN search have active discussions about Bing. The consensus state that Bing won’t replace Google as the world’s default search engine, but it does a few things well. It shines when doing shopping for a particular product. The results include compilations of reviews pulled from Web sites such as Amazon.com. Travel shopping is another highlight of Bing as it t draws heavily on the price-prediction technology Microsoft obtained last year when it bought Seattle startup Farecast.

Other Bing standouts include listings of topics, such as local restaurants, which are displayed with maps and ratings. Buttons on the side can be clicked to tailor the search and set price ranges, again adding the sort of controls common on specialized Web sites.

The lack of Usenet integration follows Bing as it did with Windows Live Search as neither implement the feature of including newsgroup messages as part of search results.