Bing in fact has a secret power that is kept too secret. Searching for a movie provides an index of which services carry the title, which saves you from individually searching various apps and sites.  Big deal?  It saves real money too, when the movie is already on a service you subscribe to, you can watch it there instead of buying it outright.

Bing search results showing services that carry a movie title.
Bing shows you were a movie is available, even if it’s from a competitor.

This little-known ability was first introduced on the Xbox several years ago, and made better for those using the Kinect microphone. You could say “Xbox, bing How I Met Your Mother” and see information about the show, as well as links to every Xbox app that carried the movie for sale or rental. The Xbox bing even went a step further by showing the prices right on the search results page. If you already had a service that provided the movie or show, it could show “free with subscription” on the Netflix or Hulu search results for example.  And if you haven’t seen what the Xbox One’s Bing search can do, you’ll love this.

Xbox Bing search home screen
Xbox provides an even further enhanced movie search.

Xbox is not the only place with bing built-in. If you have Windows 8.1 or Windows Phone 8, you don’t need to go to bing.com to try it out. Press your search button or press Windows Logo+S to search using modern integrated bing search app. If you haven’t gotten the free 8.1 update yet, open the Store app to get it.

Windows 8.1 Bing search results
Windows 8.1 has bing built-in, just press Windows+S to search.

Most appreciated is that this bing search will show where you can get a movie even if it’s a competitor. Google on the other hand, displays only a link to buy from the Google store, suppressing competitors from search results. This unfair behavior however may change soon, as the EU has been investigating Google for these and other monopoly violations.

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