Sometimes it seems that Microsoft's strategy to topple Google is to roll through search engine land, fusing different search providers in a massive Gatesian snowball.
The most startling example was the Bing partnership with Yahoo. Now Microsoft's search engine has teamed up with 'decision engine' Wolfram Alpha to offer its results as part of Bing.
It's not yet clear how data from Wolfram Alpha, which describes itself as a "computational knowledge engine" will be incorporated into Bing. However the significance in the news is the fact that another search provider is prepared to join the Microsoft bandwagon.
Could it be that, far from offering more choice, the advent of Bing will polarise it? If so, that would be bad news for consumers, even if it made search engine optimisation even more focused. Maybe we'd better Ask Jeeves?
