It’s a part of the new Ethical Shopping hub that makes buying eco-friendly clothes a breeze.
Shopping online is convenient, but it can be hard to tell what materials were sourced in the creation of a product. Microsoft aims to change that by introducing the Ethical Shopping Hub to Bing, which highlights clothes that fit certain eco-friendly characteristics.
As reported on Microsoft Bing Blogs, the Ethical Shopping Hub used to only exist in the UK. Now, the service is being rolled out to the US and Canada, so more people can purchase sustainable clothes.
Unfortunately, as of now, it does only seem limited to clothes. However, there’s a lot you can search for with this new tool. If you head over to the Ethical Shopping hub, you can select from a wide range of characteristics, such as Fairtrade clothing and shirts made of recycled materials.
The default Bing search engine will also do its part to help you find clothes that suit your needs. For instance, running a search for “vegan shoes” (that’s shoes that don’t include animal products in them) will prompt Bing to show you relevant results.
Is Microsoft Trying to Carve Out a Niche With Bing?
In the search engine market, you either outplay Google or live in its shadow. And it seems that Microsoft is taking the former route by adding features that Google doesn’t have.
We saw a similar push back in November 2020, when Microsoft introduced the shopping service to Bing. To ensure it had the edge over Google, Microsoft also added automatic coupon redemptions so that people saved money as they shopped.
Now it seems that Microsoft wants to improve on its odds versus Google Shopping by allowing users to see what materials are used in their products. This will make Bing Shopping a lot more attractive than Google’s service for people who are eco-minded.
Microsoft’s new Ethical Shopping hub tips the scales towards using Bing a little more. However, whether or not it’s enough to topple Google is yet to be seen.
