Microsoft announced today that its new Bing design is now available. We got an early look at the design last month to see exactly what has been tweaked and changed. The new Bing includes a layout of three panels that's very similar to a Metro style Windows 8 app, including search results, snapshot, and a social sidebar. Bing's three panel approach is designed to provide "search knows" facts, "bing knows" data points and figures, and "friends know" social results based on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Quora, Fourquare, and other social networks.

Although Microsoft has struggled to pry away market share from search giant Google, the company is looking towards the future of search to provide a different approach to traditional search engines. Bing's new design looks great and functions well, but is only available to US users at the moment. Microsoft has not yet announced plans to introduce its new three column design in additional countries.

Thanks, Jarrichvdv!