Two visions
If any further evidence were needed that competition is good, the simultaneous release of innovations by search engine rivals Microsoft and Google provides it.
The bigger news is probably Microsoft's. It has introduced the beta version of ‘visual search', which transforms a search from a text-based to an image-based experience.
Microsoft reckons this will be especially useful for product searches and other subjects which are both easy to categories and which are likely to have images associated with them, for example sports.
Visual search requires Microsoft's Silverlight to be installed but, despite having already done so, we can't get anything out of the beta link. You can read more about it on the Bing blog and there's a (not Silverlight) video clip below. Be warned - there's hardly any sound.