14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft's Bing search engine, which has evolved into a stand-alone platform that's now at the core of several other key products, such as Cortana and Windows 8.1's search options, turned five today and to celebrate this special moment, the Redmond-based company rolled out a gallery comprising all homepage images published since launch.
The Bing Homepage Gallery allows you to view the images features on the United States Bing homepage during the past 5 years and some are even available for download if you'd like to use them as wallpapers.
There are several categories, namely travel, nature, animals, culture, space, and science, and places, including North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. You can filter wallpapers by colors, holidays, and tag as well.
Microsoft says that since the launch of Bing on June 3, 2009, the service has evolved so much, and will pretty much continue to do this in the coming years, that it's now more than just a simple search engine, as it helps bring relevant information to users across several platforms, including Windows Phone and Surface.
“On June 3rd 2009, we debuted to the world with a fresh approach to search – one that was anchored around the mission of empowering people with knowledge- helping them do more, not just search more. A lot has happened since that debut, so we wanted to take a moment to look back on where we’ve been and give a little sneak peek at what’s to come,” the company said.
The Bing platform, as the company calls it, has turned a regular search engine, which has until now been available via your browser, just like all the other similar services out there, into an advanced product powering both Microsoft and non-Microsoft products, such as Apple's very own Siri.
“The Bing Platform puts advanced intelligence in places like Cortana, multi-lingual abilities in Facebook and Twitter, and even powers Siri and Spotlight in the new OSX to help find answers. Natural User Experiences and task brokering get us to where we want to be – a truly personal assistant that can accomplish things in conjunction with you and or on your behalf – without even having to ask,” the company explained.
As you know, there are plenty of software solutions out there that could really come in handy when trying to download the Bing homepage of the day and probably the best example is Microsoft's very own Bing Desktop.
If you're running Windows 8, however, you can use the Bing homepage of the idea as your computer lock screen with the help of a Metro app called Amazing Lock Screen and working on both desktop PCs and tablets.