A new feature has just been unveiled in Microsoft Edge by Mikhail Parakhin, CEO of Advertising and Web Services at Microsoft. Users can now search the web using two search engines simultaneously, switching between search engines based on their default settings.
MSPoweruser gives us a good example to explain how this works. Let’s say Bing is your default search engine. If you click on the search icon highlighted in the tweet below, you will also see results from your alternate search engine, such as Google. This also works in reverse, so you can navigate through your search results at the same time and compare the two based on what you’re looking for.
In Edge, you can search two search engines at once: for example, if your default is Bing and you click the search icon, you’ll see Google results (and vice versa). It stays synced and refreshes with the new search. Have you ever tried it? Is this useful? I’m asking for a friend 🙂 pic.twitter.com/p016dF8Wc1January 13, 2024
Users expressed concern in the comments below the tweet about the potential for a lot of visual clutter when combining the search results from two search engines, potentially creating a quite overwhelming layout. Parakhin did respond, hinting at the possibility of introducing an option to choose the default ‘backup’ search engine so users can better understand what’s being displayed.
Can I… become an Edge user?
The lack of options leaves a lot to be desired in terms of customization. Parakhin again made it clear that the width of the sidebars is determined by app and mobile display standards, so resizing may be unlikely, but he did make sure he was open to exploring more in-depth customization options in the near future.
As an Internet explorer who exclusively uses Chrome (pun intended), this is probably one of the few Microsoft Edge features that would actually draw me to Microsoft’s browser, so I can only imagine how exciting this must be for regular Edge users . This feature has the potential to make research so much easier now that you can search for one thing in two different search engines and compare your results – hopefully eliminating blind results in the process, as even the Google search isn’t perfect.
Its simplicity means you don’t have to open two different windows to search, and as it keeps getting better I imagine it will only get better. Personally, I now hope that Google catches up and implements something similar in Chrome!