New 'Bing Deals' Bargain Hunting Comes to Android, iPhone

Microsoft has launched a special feature in its Bing search engine intended to help users find bargains. To much surprise of many users, however, the mobile edition isn't available on Windows-based phones.

Bing Deals to Partnership with Groupon

The service, dubbed 'Bing Deals', doesn't bring any original offers, meaning it's not like Groupon or Living Social. Indeed, Microsoft says it's made a deliberate decision not to compete against such sites and instead plans to work in partnership with them. (Source: pcmag.com)

It's likely a smart decision. Services such as Groupon work by arranging deals with retailers on the basis that the deal is only valid if a certain number of customers sign up to take advantage, thus limiting the risk that the retailer will have to hand out discounts but won't increase business enough to wind up better off overall.

While that system seems to work well in most cases, the more online companies try to copy the model, the less likely any are to get enough potential customers to get retailers interested.

Bing Deals Bring Value Added Proposition

Instead, Microsoft says it's enhancing such services by adding the benefits of its search tools.

Specifically, it's working with DealMap, a company that offers a tool that allows users to quickly search offers from multiple retailers in a specific geographic area. The idea is to use Bing's technology and database to make the tool more comprehensive and accurate. (Source: bing.com)

As well as introducing this feature on the Bing homepage, Microsoft has added a customized version to the mobile Bing site on Android and iPhone devices. "Deals" will now become one of the main options, and results can be quickly filtered by the phone's location so that customers who are out and about can find cheap options nearby.

Share Bargains with Friends

The tool also allows users to share details of deals with people in their phone's contacts list. In addition, the standard search results will now include a note if a company listed in the results has a special deal on offer.

It's not clear why the feature isn't available on Bing for Windows Phone 7 devices. The most likely explanation is that the tool uses HTML 5, which won't be available until a future update for Microsoft's phone system.