Two search engines. Different results.

I will do this with partial screenshots, all from the FireFox 3.5 browser (using the Fire Shot addon where a full page "screenshot" is possible but I only capture the visible screen image on the monitor). With the addons and configuration I use things look as shown, and the return list should not depend on browser settings. You judge which camp is more gentlemanly in the sequence.

Also, try it yourselves and if, from different search engines (configured differently) you get differing results, post a comment.

I use Adblock Plus, so your screens may look different than mine that way. I have not tried this from the Internet Explorer or Chrome browsers, or Opera. Try it and see [and as always click an image to enlarge and read]:

First, a Google = google


Second, a Bing = google



Well, that's different - less informative in one way, informative in another sense.

Third, a Google = bing


Fourth, a Bing = bing


Fifth, a Google = "But It's Not Google"



Sixth, finally, a Bing = "But It's Not Google"



Those last two show acronym awareness in each search engine, Google not "piling on" where it might. Other than the first set, (items 1 and 2), there's less difference.

Surely Bing could return more when you google it for "google." It makes you wonder.

From the relative number of hits for the acronym, the Google exact phrase syntax, (enclosing the word string in quotation marks), is not used by Bing. My understanding is Bing has yet to be supplemented with an advanced search starting window.

_______UPDATE________
Useful hints, for Google -- I am still unfamiliar with Bing -- include:

Ways to use Google you might not have thought of [and do they have the type-in-a-phone-number feature there]

http://www.google.com/help/features.html

Then, a full featured calculator, in the Google search line:

http://www.google.com/help/calculator.html

Finally, Google has specialized search features Microsoft has yet to even offer in early beta version; Google Scholar, Google Patents, and Google Books being examples; shoppers and travelers might know others; and that latter Books item, if you wanted out of print and out of copyright texts for scholarship, as an example turn-of-the-century works by Heaviside, Steinmetz, and Gibbs are downloadable. Also, old treatises on banking, historically useful concerning Bank of England history for example, as well as contemporaneous documents from the 1913 formation of the Federal Reserve, etc. I do not know if many rare books are yet in the system, the Book of Kells, or Dead Sea Scroll images might have to be found elsewhere, ditto for a Shakespear first folio, Blake's illustrated poems, etc.