Microsoft shows ‘personal cards’ to Bing users

Microsoft has equipped its search engine Bing with the ability to display personalized information in the form of cards based on interests. Google has been using a similar system with Google Now for several years now.

To use the service, the user must log in to Bing with his Microsoft account and indicate his areas of interest in the so-called Bing Interests Manager. Examples are stock prices of certain shares, news reports on potentially interesting topics and weather forecasts for one or more locations.

After entering the interests, Bing will show the requested information to the user in the form of Cards on, for example, the Bing front page, Microsoft promises. This also applies to several Bing-related apps, such as the Bing Sports app and Cortana, the voice assistant and Siri counterpart that Microsoft introduced in Windows Phone 8.1.

With the use of maps, Microsoft is following Google’s lead. In 2012, Google Now introduced a personal assistant that can now be found not only in Android, but also in the Chrome browser.