Search

Search

"The boldest totally new feature that we've done in 8.1 is the Search feature," says Harris. Microsoft claims that Search is the most-used "charm," with over 90 percent of Windows 8 users activating it. "We've taken the Search feature and made Search to be the one box you can use for your PC, files, settings, and also for the web and information within apps on your PC." Put simply, Microsoft is making Search a lot more powerful in Windows 8.1. A standard web query, like Marilyn Monroe, will produce a "Search Hero" of information and data from across the web and local to the PC. Information will be surfaced from Wikipedia for example, but clicking on that data will push users into the Wikipedia Windows 8.1 app instead of a web page.

Bing gets deeply integrated into Windows 8.1

If it's a search that involves a movie then you'll be able to watch the trailer or find that particular content within applications like Netflix or Hulu. It works the same way with music and images, surfacing songs from Xbox Music with a play button or data from Bing images. Like the existing search option, you can trigger it by simply typing on the Start Screen. New to Windows 8.1 is a Windows key + S combination that will trigger the search panel across the OS regardless of whether you're in an app or desktop mode.

By default the list in the side bar starts with apps, then music, settings, files, pictures, and web suggestions all collated from content local to your PC or in SkyDrive. "You end up with this single way to command, find, and do across the entire PC," says Harris. In concept it's fairly powerful, letting you simply search for "Space Needle" and find photos you may have shot at that location and other data that's related to it. A lot of the search functionality is powered by Bing, and Microsoft isn't letting users change this particular search option over to Google. "We don't support changing the providers for that search experience," explains Harris, noting it uses Microsoft services for Windows search.

The new search experience is a key example of Microsoft's approach to using Bing across its products. Speaking to The Verge, Microsoft's director of search, Stefan Weitz, explains that Bing is helping power the 8.1 interface, but that it's just the beginning. "8.1 is in no way the end point for all of this, it really is providing us a canvas on which we can figure out how to actually pull all those things in." This new canvas only exists in Windows at the moment, and not elsewhere in Windows Phone or other Microsoft products, but it's going to extend to additional areas. "Windows is now going to scale across more devices, so you'll see this kind of experience in more form factors," explains Weitz. If it works as well as Microsoft promises, then it could be the starting point of a central location for search that's similar to Google Now.