Chrome users may be jealous of Microsoft Edge's new feature to double the power of web searches

Whatever your preferred search engine, sometimes you run a query and don't get a great set of returns - so off to another engine you pop to spin the wheel of search again - but Microsoft Edge is taking a new approach when this scenario occurs.

As highlighted on X (formerly Twitter) by Mikhail Parakhin, who is head of Advertising and Web Services at Microsoft, now when you search in Edge with Bing, you get Google results presented simultaneously in the browser's side panel.

Or vice versa, if you Google, you get Bing results, and the idea is you can glance across and easily see alternatives to what your primary search engine has dug up on any given search query.

One of the denizens of X who is impressed with the new feature puts forward the idea of being able to change the search engine presenting that secondary set of results to a different alternative - but Parakhin doesn't respond to that request. (Although Parakhin does note that an option to change the order of the icons on the sidebar will be looked at).

So, Microsoft probably isn't all that keen on Bing not being one of the search portals used in this two-engine system, as you'd expect.

At any rate, this is a neat idea, even with the limitation that Bing has to be one of the operators involved here.

It's a good example of how doing some brainstorming, and even incorporating rival services, can bolster the appeal of the Edge browser, rather than resorting to cheaper tactics like the constant prompts to use Microsoft's app instead of Chrome (or other rival browsers for that matter).