From “Live Search is evolving”
to “Copilot”.

Bing's oldest homepage in this rewind, from June 16, 2009, is a grey-blue panel with the lowercase bing wordmark, a white search box and a small orange button. A menu on the left starts with an orange EXPLORE tab and lists Images, Videos, Shopping, News, Maps and Travel. Under the panel are two teasers, Bicycle built for two and Pedal pusher, and a Popular now row: Duggars, Six Flags Bankrupt, Crohn's Disease, Ken Green.

Microsoft had announced Bing on May 28 as a Decision Engine, with the full rollout set for June 3. It would start with four areas: shopping, travel, health and local businesses.^[1] Two of them already have their own line in the menu. Bing dates its own debut to June 3, 2009.^[2]

The grey isn't the design. Bing's homepage was a photograph that changed every day, and in December 2009 Bing wrote that the pictures were there to make people curious.^[3] The Wayback Machine kept this page's code but not that day's picture.

The same code has an Extras menu with a link called Your cashback account. Keep it in mind for 2024.

June 2010 looks almost the same: grey panel, left menu, orange button. The menu now ends with Search History and Visual Search, and the teasers sell the season, New Office 2010 is here and Bing Home Turf Finder, Find a place to catch a game. Popular now lists Kennedy Marilyn, Petraeus, World Cup scores, Katy Perry and Bam Margera.

Again the photo doesn't load in the capture. The credit in the code describes it: Daytime cloud to ground lightning flashes with three branches to the ground in Texas. In July 2010 Bing explained the little arrows on its homepage. They took you back through the last seven days of photos, and a new gallery sorted older ones by topic, such as countries in Europe or pictures from space.^[4]

By October 2011 the menu has moved. Web, Images, Videos, News and More sit in a row above the search box, and the left column is gone. The top bar says International where 2010 said United States. The photo is missing in each of our first three annual captures; its credit reads View from Haleakalā, Maui, Hawaii.

A month later, on November 16, 2011, Bing's German site announced its first video homepage. The moving background needed a browser with HTML5.^[5]

In June 2012 the picture is there at last, and it fills the window: a glass tunnel through an aquarium, credited as Aquarium in the Oceanografic Park of Valencia, Spain. The grey panel is gone. The lowercase bing and the search box float over the water, the menu moves to a thin bar along the top, and two small icons at the top right are labeled Bing Rewards and Preferences in the code.

That September Microsoft went after Google by name. Bing It On let you type five searches of your own, see two sets of results without logos and pick a winner or call a draw.^[7] Microsoft said an independent firm had run a similar test in which people preferred Bing's results nearly 2:1, counting the main results only, without ads.^[6] The public version, in Microsoft's words, was a fun, non-scientific test.^[7]

June 2013 has a school of fish, Schooling bigeye trevallies off the coast of Bali, Indonesia, and one change in the top bar: Hotmail has become Outlook.com. A download arrow sits in the bottom corner. Its error message in the code never got proofread: Sorry, Bing homepage can only download with IE browser currently. Please use IE browser to donload.

On September 17, 2013, Microsoft announced a new Bing logo and a design refresh, made to fit its other products.^[9] By June 2014 the result sits to the left of the search box: a faceted b in front of the lowercase wordmark. Bing's German blog said the wordmark was a customized version of Microsoft's Segoe typeface, and that the gap between its i and n matched the i and n of the Windows logo exactly.^[10]

The photo, by its alt text, is African lion cub playing with adult male, Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya. The search button is now yellow. Links in the code ask for a commitment, Make Bing my homepage, and offer to Share today's Bing homepage on Facebook and Twitter.

In June 2015 the photo is Owens Lake in eastern California from above, and a row of story thumbnails runs along the bottom. The picture now comes with a download link and a condition: (Restricted to wallpaper use only). The menu's code lists Word Online, PowerPoint Online and Excel Online. By June 2016 the wordmark has a capital B, Bing, and the search button is teal, over Gare do Oriente station in Lisbon.

The March 2017 page is a trumpet in close-up, A member of the Pin Stripe Brass Band plays the trumpet during King's Day festivities in New Orleans. That day there was audio.

The rewards icon has a new name in its alt text, Microsoft Rewards, where 2016 said Bing Rewards. One warning about this screenshot: the strip of news thumbnails along the bottom isn't in the capture's code. The replay loaded it from a later date, and it shows headlines from 2020, a George Floyd memorial among them.

March 2018 shows cacti on Isla del Pescado on the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia. March 2019 shows the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, China, under the title Bridging the Pearl River Delta. That June Bing turned 10 and announced a retrospective running to June 17, sharing some of the decade's most popular homepage photos, with prizes, Microsoft Rewards points and wallpaper packs hidden inside.^[2]

On June 15, 2020, the photo is missing again, and this time the screenshot shows a dark grey page. Under the search box are two lines in small type: We stand in solidarity with the Black community and all those working toward racial equality. and a link, A message from our CEO. The search box now has a microphone and a camera icon, and the code offers Get the new Bing Wallpaper app.

The missing photo leaves a puzzle. The label on the screenshot, loaded by the replay, says Don't go chasing waterfalls. The capture's own code describes a different picture, Surfer on the beach in Medewi, Bali, Indonesia. The archive kept both captions and neither image.

“We stand in solidarity with the Black community and all those working toward racial equality.”bing.com, under the search box, June 15, 2020

On October 5, 2020, Bing announced that the product's name was becoming Microsoft Bing, along with Give with Bing, which let you donate the Microsoft Rewards points you earned by searching.^[11] A capture from the next day still has the page title Bing. Its photo credit describes emperor penguins on Snow Hill Island, Antarctica, and the caption turned them into a class for World Teachers' Day: a class of emperor penguin chicks getting a lesson from a couple of wise adults.^[12]

By October 2021 the logo has left the search box. Microsoft Bing sits in the top left corner next to Microsoft's four colored squares, and the search box, with the microphone and camera icons it had by 2020, moves to the center. The photo is a container ship from above, Container ship in San Pedro, California, and its story starts with the pandemic: The COVID-19 pandemic has been rough sailing for everyone, and especially so for seafarers on shipping vessels. The code's menu has picked up Esports.

The October 2022 capture is a whale's tail, Southern right whale, Golfo Nuevo, Valdes Peninsula, Argentina, and it is the Finnish version. Its code records the visitor's country as RevIpCC:"fi" and the market as "TrueMarket":"en-FI", and it offers two languages, suomi and Svenska. The menu stays in English, while the news strip under the photo carries Dutch headlines. The menu's code adds TakeLessons and Translate.

That's the archive at work: Bing classified the crawler's request as Finnish that day and answered with the page for its Finnish market.

On March 1, 2023, the first item in Bing's top menu is a new word: Chat. Over the photo floats a box with a sample question in italics, I need to throw a dinner party for 6 people who are vegetarian. Can you suggest a 3-course menu with a chocolate dessert?, and two buttons, Try it and Learn more. Arrows on both sides lead to more examples.

Three weeks earlier, on February 7, Microsoft had launched a limited desktop preview of a new Bing with AI answers and chat. Anyone could visit bing.com to try sample queries and join the waitlist.^[13] That's the box on the screenshot. Its code holds the headline it was written under: Introducing the new Bing, Ask real questions. Get complete answers.

On November 15, 2023, Bing Chat was renamed Copilot and got its own address, copilot.microsoft.com, while bing.com kept search and chat together.^[14]

On March 1, 2024, a round Copilot button sits just right of the search box. The photo is a red squirrel in mid-leap, and the card below explains why: Leaping through an extra day. It was the day after February 29, and a Quick fact box adds People born on leap day are called leaplings. The code still carries both names for the assistant, Ask Bing Chat and Ask Copilot. In the account menu's alt text is Microsoft Cashback, fifteen years after 2009's Your cashback account.

By March 2025 the browser tab reads Search - Microsoft Bing. It's March 1 again and Women's History Month again, this time with an archive photo from the suffrage movement: women with flags and shield-shaped banners reading Washington, Kansas and Colorado. Further down, the page has added On this day in history.

The March 2026 capture is the German version. Its code records the visitor's country as RevIpCC:"de" and the market as "TrueMarket":"de-DE", and the photo's title is in German: Im Licht der Balearen, over Ibiza at sunset. The menu is in English. Its first item is Copilot, and two buttons under the search box offer Image creator and Video creator.

In 2009 the corner of the page said Live Search is evolving and the menu started with EXPLORE. In 2026 it starts with Copilot. Behind both is the same idea, one new photograph a day under a search box, and in 2026 the archive kept it.

“Live Search is evolving. Tour Bing.” → “Copilot”bing.com, June 2009 → March 2026