and now for something completely different: bing it on, baby

(Those pictures of my stalled renovation were depressing me, so here's a little project that I'll be doing this week to take my mind off of it -- feel free to join me!   More Ethiopia pics to follow.)

My friend Maile always makes fun of me for the way that I dive for a search engine at any given moment.   She might, for example, mention in passing that she was wondering where disco balls came from, and before the words come out of her mouth, I've punched up the research.​  She wonders on Facebook if there are any gymnastic schools in her neighbourhood, and before her note moves from the top of my timeline, I've come up with a list.  I probably hit search engines, no lie, hundreds of times a day (and it's far worse when I'm about to travel somewhere I don't know).  I'm a woman possessed.

(But hey, I'm a lawyer, whaddyawant from me?  Research is in my blood.​)

So when I was invited by Bing and ALT Summit to take the Bing vs. Google challenge, I was pretty hard-pressed to turn them down -- search engine-ing is what I do.  For the next 5 days, along with several other bloggers, I'm going to be using Bing exclusively as my search engine (which is sort of strange, because like a lot of you out there, I've been a Google girl).  At the end of the week, I'll let you know what I think.

Feel free to join me, by the way -- Bing says that people choose their search engine over Google almost 2 to 1 in blind tests.   ​Let's see how they stack up, shall we?​

(Incidentally, do any of you out there use Bing as your exclusive search engine?  What do you think?)​

(To be completely transparent:  this post is underwritten by ​ALT summit, for their partner Bing.   But here's the thing:  they've encouraged me to be completely frank about my experience in changing my search engine-ing habits by using Bing, and that's what I plan on doing.  So as is always true on Chookooloonks, you'll be getting my honest opinion.)