They say what’s in a name? For Microsoft’s new search engine decision engine, dubbed ‘Bing’, a lot (read millions of dollars) is riding on the name and the whole premise of spoon-feeding search results to the masses.
Bing promises to interpret your search and deliver exactly what you’re looking for in small, easy-sized bites of information. Bing is from a company that has promised for over 20 years to deliver an operating system that is impervious to viruses and doesn’t freeze up your PC. Hmmm.
The name itself, “Bing” is a marketers dream. Short. Easy to remember. The domain was available (for sale). And it rhymes with lots of things.
In fact ‘Bing’ actually rhymes with ‘thing’. Who’d have thunk?
And who’d have thought the leading online search company would be called ‘Google,’ dominating the market over a company called ‘Yahoo’? I didn’t.
I couldn’t predict a company named Amazon would become the world’s biggest bookstore either. Or that a tweet would be anything more than the sound a bird makes. And though my skills as a modern day Nostradamus may be somewhat limited, there is one thing I know;
Bing is a silly name for a product.
I Google, you Google, everyone Googles, but I can’t imagine anyone admitting that they ‘Bing’ to find something online.
“Dear… I’m just Binging for our vacation information”
“John, did you Bing that camera review?”
It just sounds silly.
And it’s not new or cool. It’s Bing Crosby (who was pretty cool) and Chandler Bing (the not cool one on Friends). It’s not unique. It’s not hip. And it just sounds silly. [Authors note: There is a very sexy model called Anine Bing]
I will be road-testing Bing when the beta launches on June 3rd, and I will be honest about how and how well it divines my every desire. (PG-13 desires, obviously)
I doubt that I will become a Bing believer. Bing booster or even a Billabong (which doesn’t have the word Bing in it, but sounds eerily similar.)
I will be following the adoption of Binging and will tweet my Bing experiences as they happen. Maybe I’ll be found on Bing. You never know.
And that, how they say in Little Italy New York, is “badda boom, badda bing.”
[updated] I’d like to thanks Seth Godin who noted that BING actually stands for “But Its Not Google” in his excellent shared viewpoint of Bing’s ultimate failure.
