Bing evolved from a series of search engines developed by Microsoft. The first was MSN Search, launched in 1998. Microsoft delivered search results by massaging results from a variety of other search engines, until it started providing its own in 2004. An image search facility was made available through Picsearch.

In 2006, MSN Search was superseded by Windows Live Search, which introduced search tabs for features like Microsoft Encarta, news, and images - with Microsoft now incorporating its own image search facility.

In 2007, Microsoft rebranded Windows Live Search as Live Search, and over the next year several features were discontinued, including:

• Live Search Books and Live Search Academic  - their search results were integrated into regular search.
• Windows Live Expo
• Live Search Macros, which allowed users to create their own search engines
• Live Product Upload, which allowed sellers to upload product information into Live Search Products.

Live Search QnA was rebranded as MSN QnA but was eventually discontinued.

In 2009, Live Search was replaced by bing, and it was announced that the Yahoo! search engine would also be replaced by bing. Yahoo! Search will keep its user interface, but will feature a "Powered by bing" branding.