Last week, Microsoft cleared out the left hand sidebar of Bing and made its search engine look simple. Now, we have come know that why Microsoft cleared the house. The Redmond-based software giant did so to bring new features to Bing search engine, especially the sidebar with social networking elements.

The revamped search engine consists of three columns on the search result page. The left side column, being the widest, lists the traditional search results. The middle column is reserved for Snapshots, which displays the relevant information about the result page that appears in the search result list. And at the right hand is Sidebar, with grey-colored background, which fetches search results from social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.

Snapshot feature is already available in Google, but the new addition - Sidebar - is something new and interesting. Users can add comments to the posts and even ask question from Facebook friends directly from the Bing search page. The Sidebar includes search results from an array of social networking platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Google , LinkedIn and more.

Although this is not the first time when Microsoft is trying to integrate Facebook with its Bing search engine, but it is the most significant update since Microsoft released the Bing search engine in 2009. Currently the search engine is ranked second after Google in terms of market shares. Microsoft is bringing the fight directly to Google with the redesigned search engine. Google also includes social search capabilities, but mostly related to the home-baked platform - Google . On the other hand, Microsoft is an early investor in Facebook, building business relationships over years. Also, Google is not as popular as Facebook, giving Bing a clear advantage in social search capabilities.

The new features of Bing are not available at the time. Microsoft said that the new Bing design will roll out in U.S. within few weeks.

(reported by Johnny Wills, edited by Dave Clark)