Hot on the heels of Yahoo's recent logo redesign, Microsoft has decided to introduce a new logo and new look for Bing that's been in the making for quite some time.

Microsoft said it conducted hundreds of studies to look at motion, font, colour, size and form. It also built mock ads, localised product examples, fake billboards - basically all the stuff a graphic design artist or typographer would do when dreaming up a new logo. In the end, Microsoft explained via a blog post exactly how the Bing logo has changed.

"The wordmark is a customised version of our corporate font Segoe. We retained the lowercase ‘b’ in tribute to our Bing logo heritage and to provide a slightly less obtrusive stance. The descender on the ‘g’ has been slightly modified to curve upward in a friendlier manner and the cut on the top of the ‘b’ mirrors the angle on the cut of the ‘t’ in our Microsoft logo. The kerning pairs of the ‘i’ and the ‘n’ are exactly the same as the ‘i’ and the ‘n’ in the Windows wordmark. The symbol, a stylised ‘b’, evokes a sense of movement, direction and energy."

Read: Google wants Microsoft to remove its redesigned YouTube app for WP8

As for that orange-gold colour in the new logo, Microsoft said it "loosely pays tribute to the orange dot from the previous Bing logo while also fully embracing the Microsoft colour palette and taking inspiration from one quadrant of the corporate flag logo".

Finally, yet importantly, the company also changed how it displays search results in Bing, moving from three columns to two. It also evaluated fonts, spacing, colour, visual scan patterns and the search box. The changes aren't only physical though, as Microsoft looked at the underlying code and rebuilt Bing.com with "simplicity, speed and visual appeal" in mind to give people a better search experience on every device.

Microsoft has a preview page available for anyone who wants to take a closer look at the new logo and site redesign straight away. There's also a "Re-Imagining of Microsoft" video from last April, which features Albert Shum from the Windows Phone team and Todd Simmons of Wolff Olins giving a sneak peek at the new branding months in advance. Check it out above.

Now all that's left to do is wait and hear what critics say. They unanimously seemed to loathe Yahoo's new logo, taking aim at the typography itself. Will Bing suffer the same fate? We shall see, so stay tuned.