MPPSC 2019 Prelims Q72: Bing is a web search engine owned and operated

Q: What is the answer to MPPSC 2019 Prelims Q72?

A. Correct — A, Microsoft. Bing is a web search engine owned and operated by Microsoft. It was launched in 2009 (replacing Microsoft's earlier Live Search) and was later rebranded 'Microsoft Bing'. It is Microsoft's answer to Google Search and is the default search engine in the Microsoft Edge browser.

MPPSC 2019 Prelims Paper-I · Question 72 of 99

Verified against the official question paper. Answer as per the official MPPSC answer key.

Bing is a web search engine owned and operated by

(a)Microsoft
(b)Yahoo
(c)Alphabet Inc.
(d)Amazon

Answer

Why

Correct — A, Microsoft. Bing is a web search engine owned and operated by Microsoft. It was launched in 2009 (replacing Microsoft's earlier Live Search) and was later rebranded 'Microsoft Bing'. It is Microsoft's answer to Google Search and is the default search engine in the Microsoft Edge browser.

Why the others are wrong

(b)Yahoo — Yahoo runs Yahoo Search, a separate brand. In fact, since a 2009 deal, Yahoo's search results have largely been powered by Microsoft's Bing — but Yahoo neither owns nor operates Bing.
(c)Alphabet Inc. — Alphabet is the parent company of Google — Bing's main rival. Alphabet owns Google Search, not Bing.
(d)Amazon — Amazon is an e-commerce and cloud company (AWS); it runs product and voice search (Alexa), but not a general web search engine like Bing.

Concept

A web search engine is a service that indexes the internet and returns ranked results for a query. The big general-purpose engines and their owners are the exam's target here: Google (owned by Alphabet Inc.) and Bing (owned by Microsoft) are the two largest, with others like Yahoo Search and DuckDuckGo drawing on their indexes.

The tempting distractor is Yahoo, because Yahoo Search has been powered by Bing since 2009 — but 'powered by' is not 'owned by'. Bing belongs to Microsoft; keep the search-engine-to-owner pairs straight.

Key facts

Bing is owned and operated by Microsoft; launched in 2009
Google, Bing's main competitor, is owned by Alphabet Inc.
Yahoo Search is a separate brand, but its results are largely powered by Bing
Bing is the default search engine in Microsoft Edge

Major search engines and who owns them

Bing→Microsoft (launched 2009)

Google→Alphabet Inc.

Yahoo Search→Yahoo — but its results are powered by Bing

Amazon→E-commerce & cloud (AWS); not a general web search engine

Bing belongs to Microsoft. The trap, Yahoo, only uses Bing's technology — it does not own it.

Study next

Tech companies and their flagship products (Microsoft, Alphabet/Google, Meta, Amazon)How search engines work — crawling, indexing, rankingWeb browsers vs search engines (Edge vs Bing, Chrome vs Google)Alphabet Inc. as Google's parent (restructured in 2015)AI-assisted search (Bing Chat / Copilot)

Common traps

Choosing Yahoo because Yahoo Search is 'powered by Bing' — powered by is not owned by
Confusing the browser (Edge, Chrome) with the search engine (Bing, Google)

Static-GK IT questions pair a product with its parent company. Keep a short table: Bing–Microsoft, Google/YouTube–Alphabet, WhatsApp/Instagram–Meta, AWS–Amazon.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
The search engine Google is a product of which parent company?
- (a)Microsoft
- (b)Alphabet Inc.
- (c)Meta
- (d)Oracle
Answer(b) Alphabet Inc. — Google's parent since the 2015 restructuring.
practice — not a real PYQ
Since 2009, Yahoo's web search results have largely been powered by the search technology of:
- (a)Google
- (b)Microsoft (Bing)
- (c)Amazon
- (d)Baidu
Answer(b) Microsoft (Bing) — under the Microsoft–Yahoo search alliance.