Users of Microsoft's Bing will now have access features integrating the search engine with popular image-sharing service Pinterest. Microsoft tipped the new feature in a
post to the
Bing Search Blog last week, noting that the ability to share to Pinterest flowed out of previous meetings the company had had with lifestyle and design bloggers at Bing headquarters last fall.
Users will now be able to pin interesting images directly to their Pinterest boards, without the need to install a bookmarklet or other plugin. The search engine automatically links to and attributes the original, high-resolution source of the image.
Bing integration is, perhaps, one of the largest affecting Pinterest since the site achieved wider popularity. Early in 2012,
Google was rumored to be eyeing Pinterest for a possible acquisition. That deal never materialized, though, possibly due to Pinterest's leadership's reportedly greater interest in organizing their own IPO.
The move is Microsoft's latest attempt to further enrich Bing's feature set in order to better compete with search giant Google. At roughly 25 percent of U.S. search share, Bing is not exactly irrelevant, but that share pales in comparison to Google's hold on the market, nearly 70 percent. On a global scale, Bing is far behind, with only 2.8 percent of total worldwide searches in December of 2012.
To counter Google's search dominance, Bing has tried to differentiate its service, integrating as best possible with other popular web services. Bing already allows users to connect to their Facebook accounts, and the search engine added
social questioning site Quora to its partners in August.