UW CSE Colloquium: Harry Shum on Bing

02/11/10
3:30 pm
University of Washington, EEB-105, Seattle, WA

Info and details here.

Bing: Intent, Knowledge, and Decision Engine
Harry Shum (Microsoft Corporation)

Abstract

On June 1, 2009, Microsoft Corporation released its search engine www.bing.com and called it decision engine. According to analysis firm ComScore, Microsoft’s Bing saw its search count grow faster than any of the other top search engines in 2009. Bing captured 4.1 Billion searches in the month of December 2009, an increase of 70% compared with 2.4 Billion searches a year ago. In comparison, the overall market grew 46% in 2009.

In this talk, I will discuss a number of design decisions and technology directions the Bing team have taken in developing the decision engine. From minimizing time of query and URL matching to minimizing time of user completing a task. From understanding query to understanding user intent. From relevance of 10 blue links to whole page relevance and to whole session relevance. The search paradigm is shifting from “search hit-or-miss model” to “Bing dialog model” where the search engine of the future must focus on improving user experience to facilitate task completion.

Bio

Harry Shum is a Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Corporation, responsible for search product development www.bing.com . Previously he was a researcher in Microsoft Research Asia and Microsoft Research Redmond, working on computer vision and computer graphics. He received his PhD in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University. He is a Fellow of IEEE and Fellow of ACM.