I’m Ross Comer and I lead the team that develops the Bing homepage.  Having run other parts of Bing such as News and Entertainment Search, it’s very exciting to now be responsible for the homepage which is the best visual representation of the Bing brand.  It is a key differentiator from our competitors who, despite efforts to do so, have been unable to duplicate (you might recall one such disastrous effort by a competitor which was quickly cancelled after it made the search box difficult to find).

 

The challenges of the homepage are slightly different from the rest of Bing in that we need to balance adding features that help users get their tasks done faster while still preserving the homepages visual appeal.  Recently we added videos to the homepage, carefully ensuring the main user task of searching is not impacted while still offering up the occasional delightful surprise, something that has been very well received.  However we’ve also run many tests of other features which, while somewhat increase our click-through to searches, also detract from the beauty of the page and therefore won’t be released.

 

We have many cool new features coming to the homepage that I can’t wait to ship.  I think they achieve that balance while expanding on the excitement and usefulness of the homepage, helping people explore the web event better than they can today.

 

Wanna job like mine?  Check out http://bit.ly/BingHomePageTeam.

 

Ross Comer has had almost 20 years of experience at Microsoft.  He started on the Excel 5 development team where he owned such features as AutoCorrect (teh -> the) and AutoComplete (type Banana, press B, and Excel completes the word Banana).  Ross went on to the MSN Money team, rated the Best of the Web for its innovative functionality, where he lead various teams including development, operations, and program management.  For the past four years Ross has been on the Bing development team, starting out with leading News Search, developing several other Bing verticals including most recently Entertainment, and can now be found running the Bing Engagement team consisting of the Bing Homepage, Notifications, and Rewards.