The Bing Thing
(Bill Gurstelle is guest blogging here on Boing Boing. He is the
author of books including Backyard
Ballistics, and the recently-published Absinthe
and Flamethrowers. Follow him on Twitter: @wmgurst.)
I don't purport to be an expert in things computer and Internet related. Usually I just read what people I respect say and go with that. Often, they point me me to Google's stuff (search, gmail, Picasa, youtube, etc) and I've always been pretty impressed with their services.
Microsoft just introduced Bing to compete with Google search. My friend Mark Hurst sent me a very interesting article he wrote about it.
Everything Microsoft has tried recently hasn't worked. They tried the "I'm a PC" ads, a knockoff of the Mac ads - didn't work. Tried the Zune, a knockoff of the iPod - didn't work. Tried redoing MSN Search again and again, as a knockoff of Google - didn't work. What's the world coming to, when Microsoft can't build a monopoly around a knockoff?Hurst's full post is at http://goodexperience.com/2009/06/microsoft-has-a-probl.php
It's those effing customers. They keep choosing the best experience.
I have to imagine this is tough on Ballmer and whoever else over there. No matter what they try, the customers refuse to take orders from Redmond. Sure, lots of people still pay the upgrade tax on Windows and Office every two years, but only because they have to. There's no love.
So what does Microsoft do? They launch - I'm still reeling from this - they launch a search engine. To compete head-on with Google. In search. I just need to type that again: Microsoft wants to unseat Google with a search engine.
Now here's where it gets really nuts.
Microsoft's strategy, to win market share from Google, is not to compete on user experience. No. Microsoft's strategy is to advertise the heck out of the thing and hope people flock to the site.
They are spending - wait, let me try my best "Dr. Evil" voice - one hundred million dollars to order the world to use their search engine. According to a Microsoft exec in charge of the launch, "The key will be whether we deliver a product and connect with people emotionally in the advertising."
A hundred million dollars to "connect with people emotionally in the advertising." If I've learned one thing in my customer experience work over 12 years, it's this: any online strategy built on emotional connection, based on flashy ads or a new font or color scheme on the website, is guaranteed to fail.
the latest
latest episodes
That's what you hire a John Hodgman lookalike for your ad campaign instead of getting the real thing.
But really, none of this is new. Microsoft has been pushing ripoffs of superior software ever since they ripped off the original Mac OS to create Windows. What's amazing is that it's worked for them so well until now.
I don't think he used the word 'knockoff' enough. (yes, that's sarcasm...) That's off-putting for me even though he does have a point.
Haven't used Bing yet, seeing as how I hated MSN's Live Search with a passion, but I hear decent things. Thing is Google owns my soul.
I won't deny that Microsoft marketing is generally pretty foolish.
That iPod has beaten Zune (and everything else) is pretty clear -- but it's not really because it is a better "user experience." Nor does it mean every iPod competitor is unprofitable.
That Google search has beaten Live/Bing and every other search is also pretty clear, and again, it doesn't mean that every Google competitor is unprofitable.
That MacOS has beaten Windows is... oh wait, it totally hasn't.
I kind of like Bing. They just need to make it, uh, look a little better.
Wait... you mean perception ISN'T reality? How can this be?
I am not saying that Microsoft isn't a big bloated company that comes out with lame ideas often enough but they must be doing some things right. Windows has been around over 20 years just as long as Mac OS and Windows still has an 88% market share and Mac OS has yet to break 10% so why is that? Does user experience really trump their business strategy? Doesn't seem so when you look at the numbers. And look at the Xbox, not the first gaming system out there but definitely the most popular. You can't say Microsoft just made a crappy knockoff there.
Bing image search knocks the socks off google image search
Inferior knockoff product with superior marketing budget is old hat now with a lot more savvy folks in the market. MS can't seem to be innovative about their products or even clever in their marketing, so they are a doomed dinosaur. What's missing is the passion. You don't get that from being an aging king trying to hold onto your crown. You get that from being the underdog and from being fearless, something MS has bred out of their employees and partners.
That's pretty funny, Brainspore, considering that the "Hodgman look-alike" was an actual Microsoft employee, so he's more "real" than an actor who happens to own a Mac pretending to be a PC.
And MacOS ripped off the Xerox Alto.
To be fair, google didn't create You Tube, they bought it out after it became popular. Also, Bing as a search engine is pretty good, but no matter how good it is people habitually use google. Maybe Microsoft does need to have a good marketing campain to get people to try it.
Dunno, I just saw a MS ad where a young Midwestern woman and her mother--both blonde corn-fed Regular 'Mericans--comparison shop for a new laptop: the mother's syrupy drawl, looking askance at a Mac, "Now whah'd yuh wahnna payh douhble fuh thaat?" is an eloquent, non-jokey repudiation of the designey, hipster, Justin-Long Mac aesthetic. I thought it "worked" (as image: don't know its effect on sales) perfectly as a message to non-computer-saavy consumers: "You know all of those smirky Mac users? Fuck them. You get to save money that you can spend of Snuggies instead."
A good ad!
I'm sure this will work as well as the time MS threw an ungodly amount of marketing money behind a search engine. Butterflies, anyone?
For 100 million dollars, they could pay 1 million people $100 each to use it for a year. Then they could at least, for a year, claim over 'a million users.' Over because Ballmer would use it out of guilt for wasting everyone's time and money.
Could we retire the superior/inferior tech meme? It's one's use for tech, not the inherent capability of the tech in question, that determines value, no? If you want to play video games on a computer, then a PC's your bet: no "inherent superiority" that Macs putatively enjoy is going to beat out that need.
"A hundred million dollars to "connect with people emotionally in the advertising." If I've learned one thing in my customer experience work over 12 years, it's this: any online strategy built on emotional connection, based on flashy ads or a new font or color scheme on the website, is guaranteed to fail."
Uhhh...this is what Apple's been doing with their shoddy, overpriced products since Day One.
I've tried Bing, and I like it. *Shrug* It's not great, but it's certainly not bad. In fact, I like Bing's formatting for image- and video-search results a LOT more than Google's.
However, here's a misconception that many people (including the advertising execs at MS) seem to buy into all too willingly: that internet search is an all-or-nothing venture. You either use Google or Bing or Ask.com or whatever exclusively, and never acknowledge the existence of the others. That's bullshit. There's nothing wrong with using one search engine for one task, and another for a different one. Honestly, I now prefer Bing to Google for image search, but still use Google for everything else.
MS may not know what they're doing when it comes to advertising (seriously, their ad department needs to be lined up and shot out back of the electrical plant), but they do know how to make products that CAN appeal to folks. They just don't know how to let people know about those products properly. If they spent the ad money on demonstrating Bing's most salient features, they'd probably have a winner on their hands--but all they're doing is saying, "Big is nice! It's convenient! Use it!" Uhhhh...okay. WHY?
It's not that the features aren't there--MS just doesn't have a clue how to let people know about them.
There's enough loaded assertions without data here to make this look a lot like the dime-a-dozen uncritical MS-bashings of a Apple zealot.
How exactly are the "I'm a PC" ads a failure? By what metric?
And how exactly is the Zune a failure? It may not be much of a success, but they did accomplish something quite significant. They showed up late and piggy-backed their way into a market that their competitor otherwise owned lock, stock, and barrel. Also, don't forget at launch in 2006 they were talking about a five year timeline. It's still a little early.
And as far as "everything they do lately is a failure", what about their desktop market share? Or their server market share? Or good lord, what about the XBox?
Talk about an "emotional connection" - Apple has pulled off quite a trick in getting their fans to not only buy all that overpriced closed-source hardware and subscriptions to libraries of DRM-crippled bits, but to actually be such zealots that they see MS as an evil empire to such an extent that an ad campaign is interpreted as them "ordering" people to do something.
Yeeesh.
According to the economists, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, people are willing to take more risk to prevent losing something than they are to gain something.
Read another way: success kills the kind of risk-taking that leads to further success.
the reason Bing will never overtake Google in search is because Google has become synonymous with search. to search is to google, it has been verbed.
Perhaps Microsoft's next ad campaign can feature it's biggest supporter, 'Anonymous.'
My boyfriend and I thought the commercials with the little kids were actually really good; showing normal people using the computer in normal ways. And it didn't hurt that Kayley "I'm a PC and I'm only 4 years old" was super-duper cute.
Why didn't they just stick to those? They got my attention and got the point across by actually showing you how to use the programs.
Microsoft's marketing department needs to be taken out back and shot for their flightiness.
Microsoft, you keep trying to start a gun fight on the battle-field when everybody else is eating cotton candy at the fair.
When was the last time you saw a Google ad? You can't win the fight when the other side is never there to fight you. Sun Tzu said that...or maybe something similar to that. Actually, I don't know. I only skimmed through his book. Doesn't Sun have a talk-show now?
I've gotta agree with the people above, Bing's image search is better than Google's. I'm not talking results, I haven't done a comparison, but as far as the interface goes it is better. I don't use it, because I don't do enough image searching to justify switching up which search engine I use, but I'd be happy if Google ripped it off.
I also think the Zune is a superior product to the ipod classic. It doesn't touch the *ahem* touch, but it's not really in that category of products. It's very much like the ipod classic, and beats it easily in my opinion. Radio, screen, wireless, etc. What's not to like, is it not hip enough? You can still buy white earbuds for it if you need that.
Am I the only person who likes Bing? Oh well.
Anyways, who watches TV anymore? Why spend so much money on ads. Whatever.
Agreed with all of those who say Bing's image and video page kicks google's arse....the little "cursor over the window starts play" feature is pretty impressive.
#19, trying to make it personal doesn't add much here.
I'm not MS's biggest fan by any stretch. There's a lot to like and dislike about both MS and Apple.
The Apple-vs-MS religous war is about as stupid as that old one about Ford-vs-Chevy trucks.
The point is to focus on the data, not on the emotional loading that marketing dollars have bought and paid for.
Anon6, the Wii has outsold the Xbox 2:1. I would think the game sales are higher for the Xbox, but don't have anything to back that up. (Most Wii people just play the bundled sports games or one or two others.. Xbox owners tend to buy a bunch of games.)
Many Wii users don't fall into the category of "hardcore gamers" that MS has relatively locked up. A truer comparison would be between PS3 and Xbox360, and there it's the 360 FTW, decisively....
Y'know, Bing has audio preview for video searches and searches across multiple sites for video, one thing that endears it over the competition in some cases.
#9 "And MacOS ripped off the Xerox Alto."
And in turn, Microsoft Windows ripped off Mac. So are you saying that Windows is really just a knock-off of a knock-off?
Google took a page out of Apple's book and figured out a way to do more by doing less. Minimalism, simplicity.
It's something Microsoft doesn't do, it's just not in its culture. The Microsoft culture likes to tick checkboxes for features, which is why it does so good in the corporate culture which thinks the same way. (Ironically the big enemy Linux is much the same.) Unfortunately for MS the consumer is progressively turning away from complexity in order to be more productive by having to deal with less.
1:30
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL8XYBo2gPQ
Just tried out Bing. To say I'm not a Microsoft fan is an understatement (the machine I'm typing this message on is running Linux, as are all my home machines). But so far it looks like they did a very good job, and the results for some queries seem slightly better on Bing than on Google. Since the non-relevant hits I see on Google's side are often people trying to sell stuff, that might just mean that, since Google's been around longer, more people have managed to fool their algorithm into achieving better placement.
Spending $100 million on ads will get a lot of people to try Bing. If they have a good experience they'll come back; if not, they won't.
@ spejic #9:
Believe it or not, I was aware that Mr. Hodgman is not actually a computer running a Microsoft operating system. I am also aware that Microsoft's lookalike was selected for their ad campaign solely based on his resemblance to Hodgman. I wasn't discussing which ad was more "real," I was discussing which was more original.
And Ditto Hayduke #29: if MacOS is a ripoff, Windows is doubly so. Besides, Mac actually improved on the Alto OS, whereas it took Microsoft 11 years just to catch up with the "trash can" on the Mac.
@#18 kromekoran who said,
The fact that it has been verbed means that it is out of their control. This is the reason why they discourage the practice of using "google" as a verb. Many people "Tivo" their favorite TV shows, but I only know a couple of people that actually have Tivo brand DVRs. The last time I made a xerox, it was on a Canon copier. (ok maybe that last one is starting to die out.) "To google" may simply replace "to search". I am pretty sure that "to bing" will not. However, right now I'm going to google some stuff on bing in order to check it out.
Is "bing" a reference to the movie Groundhogs day?
Either way they should really have Needle Nose Ned in their ads.
You know, Ned the Head...
-Ned?
BING!
-Bing?
I'm so glad my boss isn't like that! I'm working with Microsoft right now, and became a huge fan of the Bing (microsoft.com/bing). I especially like the lack of Crosby display and html web browser. It's awesome!
Replace "Microsoft" with "IBM" and "Google" with "Microsoft" and these posts are eerily similar to the PC magazine editorials of 25 years ago.
Microsoft is now old enough that the people who built it are retiring and being replaced by people who are mostly interested in having comfortable careers.
As a graduate student in oceanography, the best part about Google for me is the ability to search for a specific journal article and find (quickly) if it is accessible for free. I just tried this with Bing, and the first three I tried Bing came up with an accessible paper where Google didn't. I guess I use Bing now.
I dunno, finding porn with Bing seems to be popular (go ahead and, ahem, google for 'Bing' and 'porn'). Especially the video.
The thing is, nothing Bing does is remarkable in and of itself; if it works well, Google will implement a version of it and re-emphasize that no one ever need leave Google to get all the search she wants.
Bing's first three search suggestions when you enter "linux" are "linux windows", "linux microsoft" and "linux vista". None of those possibilities show up anywhere in the suggestion list on Yahoo! or Google, which leads me to believe they aren't an accurate reflection of search term popularity.
If they're so blatantly willing to corrupt their results with marketing I'll keep taking my business elsewhere.
@34 SKR
I considered that when writing my comment. especially the Xerox example. however, I believe that because Google is a free, easily accessible service on the internet it doesn't compare well to the history of the Xerox brand or the Tivo brand. most people use whatever copier their office bought, or whatever DVR their cable/satellite provider gave them with the service.
when someone is already using google/search interchangeably, and they sit down at their computer to google, why wouldn't they automatically go too google.com to do it.
I have no evidence to prove this is true, and don't know if there has been any kind of study done. but what I do know is that my father uses Google to get to Yahoo. a very strange phenomenon.
Real nerds use Wolfram|Alpha.
@JHEISS:
Odd. When I search Linux, bing's first 10 results are optimal.
Maybe you are doing it wrong?
Gave Bing a try a few days ago and like some features, don't like others. I do a lot of image searches and the feature I love is the "Show Similar Images" function. It's a great way to narrow image searches to more relevant images. Also, the photo or illustration distinction is handy (though doesn't always work).
On the other hand, the size settings don't seem to work very well. I still get tiny images showing up when size is set to "large", or the poorly named "wallpaper".
Also, it would be nice if the thumbs that get cached in the left hand window would take you directly to the image. I mean, I'm doing an image search, so get me quickly to the image, not the page where it lives (though that info should still be easily available.)
#42 posted by noen:
For what?
I've tried to use it many times over the past couple of weeks. It's never been sure what to do with my input. Not once. If three or four increasingly simplified versions of "percentage of imported oil made into gasoline" isn't clear enough, then what the hell is? Apparently that subject is not a "specific question," an "objective fact," "known to Wolfram|Alpha," or "public information."
Google, on the other hand, thinks otherwise, and provided me with the answer from multiple sources on one page.
Entering "oil" (as simple as I could get, just for laughs) was interpreted as "Texaco Clarity 10W-20," with many facts about same. "Imported oil" got nothing.
I've made a concerted effort to use it in lieu of Google to get basic statistical information about several topics, and it's been utterly useless every time, despite "10+ trillion of pieces of data, 50,000+ types of algorithms and models, and linguistic capabilities for 1000+ domains."
It'll probably be useful to someone for something, but as an application, it is apparently a solution to a problem I don't have.
$100 million is probably twice what a normal product launch cost to create awareness at some defined level. Clorox Green Works spent $50 million on their household "faux" green cleaner launch...How else to you propose a large company create awareness about a new site or product or anything? Awareness leads to trial and some percentage of conversion....and that will likely be the problem...folks are used to google, so there would need to be a compelling reason for someone to switch after visiting "Bing"...there will be switchers, but probably not enough to consider "Bing" a success....
Some of these Microsoft criticisms seem specious at best. the comment about the upgrade tax is particularly galling considering that Apple has no problems abandoning me with my out of date ipod and iphone completely every year or two. And mocking Microsofts ad campaign seems utterly ridiculous in the face of the ocean of commercials Apple has drowned us with week after week. Don't get me wrong, I love my apple products but i also don't feel compelled to hate Microsoft or smack talk their almost pathetic attempts to stay relevant. Ultimately noone should have a monopoly on any service or product. Not Microsoft. Not Apple. Not Google.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lusXJIfB4ys
bing...bing....bing...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OMcV3qgI08&feature=related
Bing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vPfOjAw5Z0
Wow, $100 million. . . that'll bankrupt Microsoft. . . oh, wait, no it won't.
Bing Bing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRBEdb73rsI
The main reason I'm not going to use this Bing thing, other than the stupid name, is that I don't trust MS not to skew their results in order to advertise their own products. I think they're aware, these days, that they are not creating superior products or products with better usability - Vista's rather spectacular failure is hard to ignore. They're just relying on advertising to maintain the network monopoly they have going on.
Ultimately, this search engine they're advertising so heavily (I found out about it through a really really long commercial that seemed to argue that a new search engine would save the world) will just be another tool to entrench their hold on the PC world.
If it works for you and you don't mind being part of their giant promotion machine, go for it. I mind. Ick.
The unbearable lightness of Bing.
#14:
Nonsense!
You can TOTALLY play 'World of Warcraft' on a Mac.
And the best part?
You can play it ironically!
Microsoft has had a Bob and now Bing, so where is Dorothy?
I had high hopes for Bing after watching their preview video, but I never seem to search for stuff where the advanced features kick in.
That said, Google is not the be all or end all for search. Frankly, I've been finding myself paging deeper and deeper into Google trying to find what I'm looking for often with irrelevant spaminess or SEO'ed lameness taking up the first 3-4 pages of results. It reminds me of the downward spiral of Altavista and Infoseek. Sometimes, more pages != better results.
That said, Google is not the be all or end all for search.
How true! I've also found Google less and less useful for finding the actual information I want, with more and more link farms, dynamically generated URLs that have my whole search term in them, random crap, etc. This might not be google's fault, but rather a reflection of what's out on the internet these days.
The most frustrating is trying to search for information about something that is also coincidentally a product. Type any product's name into google, and you'll get tons of hits trying to sell it to you. I'd love to be able to check a "non-commercial" check box on Google (or any search engine!) and have it work.
I haven't checked out Bing yet, but I definitely will. The day search results become a complete monopoly will be a sad day indeed.
BS. The Xbox 360, numerous video games from their studio, multiple beautifully designed gaming accessories. Project Natal. They have hits and misses just like everybody else.
"Sure, lots of people still pay the upgrade tax on Windows and Office every two years, but only because they have to. There's no love."
I'd say the run on Windows 7 Beta/RC and the raving reviews of it tell a different story.
But does it croon?
It's much worse than that, really. They ripped off CP/M to create MS-DOS in the first place. Except ... they didn't actually create MS-DOS either, they just found the company that owned it, bought them out, and stuck their own name on the product.
They have been doing this same crap from the beginning ... there is no other company there. There is nothing underneath.
Microsoft has invented some cool stuff, such as the Xbox. But the ripoffs go farther back than Mac=>Windows. They started DOS by buying and then remarketing a quick-and-dirty ripoff of leading operating system CP/M.
So far I far prefer bing to google, mainly because it doesn't frontload the search results with commercial stuff. If that every changes I'll switch again.
I do find it odd that Crosby does not show up on the first page of results for the search "bing"...but search "bing" on the google and you get a bunch of bingy adverts (a surfboard company, energy drinks, and car parts company) before getting to Crosby. I'm really tired of the google's commercialism.
The major advantage I see with Google is their apparent support for Linux. They are one of the biggest (wealthiest, most influential) hope for OSS. At least compared to other big companies. I certainly wouldn't want to see them replaced with Microsoft which I try to have involved as little as possible in my computing experience. That alone is a good reason enough for me to stay away from Bing, and I urge everybody to do the same, for the sake of our future!
"I'd say the run on Windows 7 Beta/RC and the raving reviews of it tell a different story.
I don't want to make this into a senseless "windows sux0rz Linux rulzzzz Mac is bett0r" flamewar. But honestly, do you really think the majority of Windows users use it because they prefer Windows over other options? Or do you even think the majority of users EVER tried something different than Microsoft products?
I always wonder what drives a company toward choosing a name. Bing... don't get it.
Then I think about it a bit more. I doubt they are expecting to verb-ize Bing to be synonymous with search, ala google. But have you ever been writing something and tried to type "goggle"? Its near impossible unless you think about it... all those little neurons firing for my fingers to instinctually type anything remotely resembling google will plunk out GOOGLE on my screen. I'm entrenched.
Which makes me think, what could the next most easily typed string of letters be in the english language? I'm not sure, but "ing" gets close I'm sure. Its a silky string, ends ends with a nice pinky dash to the carriage return. Throw a B on there. Done. The name itself is idiotic enough that I cant think of another reason. But I'm not a marketing guru as MS have proven themselves to be time and time again (...) so what do I know.
I've spoken with people who work at google, and they're not entirely happy with the fact that "google" has become a verb either. Main reason - you lose control and have no ownership over public language. Perhaps another reason MS went with something so obscure and tough to spit out as Bing. Bing it. Blaugh.
Bing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJjKL-K_Pk0
People b*tch about the "upgrade tax" on M$ software, but Apple does this all the time, and without warning.
Just this past week, Apple released a QT update. And if you accepted the update (which was presumably related to security and not added new functionality), **your existing copy of QT Pro** would be rendered inoperable.
So, if you want to encode video, and have already paid for QT Pro, if you accept the QT update, you can no longer encode video w/o paying Apple for a compatible version of QT Pro.
This is bogus. Minor updates of existing software should *never* break the most recent version of the manufacturer's own product. To make products this was is predatory.
I prefer Live.com/Bing's Maps website to Google Maps, but I don't think I'd switch to Bing.com for regular searches unless they offered clustered search topics a la Vivisimo/Clusty.com.
IMHO, they should have used the time/effort they've been using on successive re-branding of their web content on improving the visual consistency/look-and-feel of their webservices. As it is, there's some things that have been rebranded Bing.com with its ugly stretched logo (live.com search, maps.live.com), some services that are still Live.com (the homepage site, online storage services), and some are still even MSN-branded! MSN.com, for instance, has a huge list of links at the top that mostly still lead to MSN-branded pages, but a few random things like the Shopping link take you to a Bing.com branded site.
They were pushing Windows Live.com (2005) as the "next big thing" when that came out, so I'm a bit skeptical that they'll stick with Bing for more than a few years before getting bored with it and hastily re-branding it yet again.
"People b*tch about the "upgrade tax" on M$ software, but Apple does this all the time, and without warning."
I'm always happy to remind people that apple sucks as much as M$. :>
TheCrawNotTheCraw
I wonder why that happened with your QTPro upgrade (or why it didn't happen to mine), because I just installed the update after reading your comment.. and everything works fine. Export, fullscreen etc.
Also, if you could cite a few of the "all the time"s that you mentioned, that'd be good. I can only think of a single instance (though my knowledge is by no means perfect) of an Apple update intentionally removing functionality from a set of users, and that was (funnily enough) when Quicktime Player originally went Pro. All of a sudden we had to pay for a number of functions we had had access to all along, for free.
Mostly though, in my experience, Apple doesn't really care about enforcing serial numbers etc.. Because essentially, if you are using Apple software you have to be using Apple hardware. that's why there's no serial number on OSX, and in fact, when I installed Shake it didn't even ask for the serial number, even though there was one.
Anyway, I don't doubt your experience, I just wonder why it's so different to mine.
Bing image search: I can't command/control click the image to open it in a new tab, because it does javascripty ajax voodoo to load it in the current "frame."
Sucks.
i found an interesting article by some marketing/branding gurus on the curiously named "bing." well worth a read. http://onthebutton.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/naming_bing/
Here's a Chevy Nova [doesn't go en espanol] moment for you... I just saw the 'Bing!' commercial on TV, with the forceful way that they say Bing!
Well.
In Chinese, if you say it like that it's 'sick!' MacOSX dictionary to the rescue, with CEDict:
生病 / 生病
| shēng bìng |
ill
sick
the saga continues over at on the button: http://onthebutton.wordpress.com/2009/06/08/naming_bing_continued/ commentary collected from around the web. enjoy.
Blah blah blah ... "I hate Microsoft" ... "I like Bing better than Google" ... seriously people. If you like a search engine, use it. Who cares as long as you find what you are looking for. Right?
Same for your computer choice. If your purchase criteria is "cheap" go get a Windows box. If you want to spend a little extra for a Mac because you like the look and feel, knock yourself out. Does it realy matter?
i just saw an ad for bing on boing boing.
thought i'd point that out