[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Microsoft May Rename Live Search 'Bing': Massive Ad Campaign Planned here

[WinTard]

Bing? Bong? Ping? Pong?

Marketeers! Sheesh! Yet they get the big bucks... ?:|

At least Google isn't based on a colloquialism (yet paradoxically now is). It is a cute 'variation' of a googol:

Quote

A googol is the large number 10 ^100^, that is, the digit 1 followed by one hundred zeros (in decimal representation).

The term was coined in 1938[1] by Milton Sirotta (1929–1980), nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner. Kasner popularized the concept in his book Mathematics and the Imagination (1940). Googol is of the same order of magnitude as the factorial of 70 (70! being approximately 1.198 googol, or 10 to the power 100.0784). Its only prime factors are 2 and 5 (100 of each). In binary it would take up 333 bits. A googol has no particular significance in mathematics, but is useful when comparing with other very large quantities such as the number of subatomic particles in the visible universe or the number of possible chess games. Edward Kasner created it to illustrate the difference between an unimaginably large number and infinity, and in this role it is sometimes used in teaching mathematics.

A googol can be written in conventional notation as follows:

1 googol
= 10 ^100^
=10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Its official English number name is ten duotrigintillion on the short scale, ten thousand sexdecillion on the long scale, or ten sexdecilliard on the Peletier long scale.

PS: sexdecilliard rhymes with WinTard.... :D

PPS: Speaking of which the YAHOO acronym originally stood for: Yet Another Holistic Outstanding Orifice (When first thought by the founding University kids back at the beginning... Now it has been sanitized, and they will officially deny it to their death.)

~~~~~~~~~
Programming is similar to a game of golf. The point is not getting the ball in the hole but how many strokes it takes.
~ Harlan Mills

[sfoalex]

Live Search has such a nice ring to it, I wish they'd leave it alone.

[miniappleman]

Figures that MS would pick the name of a 1940's crooner for what is supposed to be a 21st century search product. Any time you use the search engine you'll be humming "White Christmas" to yourself. Do they realize Bing is dead?

OMG!!! Could they possibly be thinking of calling this the most "Cherry" search engine available? Use our "Bing" to cherry-pick the websites of our best paying customers? Use Bing to Ping the Thing you Bring?

Either way, the Crosby family or cherry growers are going to be upset with MS's "Pick".

[mathion]

Given that the whole 'Live' thing Microsoft was trying to push was a dismal failure - and, in my opinion, showed a remarkable lack of imagination - any branding change is supposed to be an improvement. At least you're not wondering if there's a Live (insert your service of choice here) from Microsoft.
Dissociating itself from "Microsoft" as well may be a good thing. But "Bing"? It sounds more appropriate to the sound a cash register makes when making a sale.
Has Microsoft ever heard of using a focus group OUTSIDE of Redmond where everyone works for Microsoft? For that matter, have they ever used a focus group AT ALL? (Given past history and practices, it's hard to say.)
If I'm looking for 1930's to 60's crooners, no problemo. I'll search Bing. But that's the only time I'LL ever type it into a web browser...
New name, same crappy results.

[DarrowfortheProsecution]

Leave it to Microsoft to have to spend 100 million dollars to convince the world that their "new" search engine is the cats meow.

Leave it to the culture of Microsoft to believe that they can do it.

Leave it to Microsoft to believe that what the world REALLY needs in the area of fundamental search functions is a Microsoft product.

Leave it to Microsoft to FIUBARHOU the online search concept.

I can't wait to see the Microsoft "Bing" help matrix. HA, Talk about getting a computer all bound up some esoterical, self loathing, routine

to "find the meaning of the universe".



Also, How large s a Google? About as big as all of the words, vowels, consonants, letters, syllables,and punctuation marks in Win Tards unsolicited discriptive tomb.

[artzy65]

"At least Google isn't based on a colloquialism (yet paradoxically now is). It is a cute 'variation' of a googol:"

When I first became aware of google the search engine, I automatically assumed it referred to the old cartoon strip 'Barney Google' (with the "goo-goo-googly eyes" in the 1923 Billy Rose song, I remember that tune from the '50s... the corn grew real high in those days)... his eyes were always bulging out and so the connection to the search engine seemed appropriate.

This guy has a different take on it:
http://graphics.stan....edu/~dk/googlenameorigin.html

"Bing? Bong? Ping? Pong?"
Bing... shades of the Sopranos...

[artzy65]

"Dissociating itself from "Microsoft" as well may be a good thing. But "Bing"? It sounds more appropriate to the sound a cash register makes when making a sale."

"The Bada Bing! (aka the Bada Bing or The Bing) is a fictional go-go bar from the HBO drama television series The Sopranos. It was a key location for events in the series, named for catchphrase "bada bing", a phrase popularized by James Caan in The Godfather."
(Quote from: http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Bada_Bing)

What can one say about those tools at Microsoft... maybe they should dress Ballmer like Tony Soprano... Stevie can rant and rave with the best of them.
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=Nc4MzqBFxZE

Geez, even 'Bling' would be better...

[Evildave]

Search with Micro$oft BUNG!

[binaryspiral]

Spend the money on making the search engine better. People aren't using Live Search because it sucks not because it hasn't been shoved down their throats with toolbars, browsers, and web apps... it can't find anything.
If paying people off to use their search engine isn't even working - then what will a new name and marketing campaign do for you? NOTHING!
You can paint a dog turd gold, encrust it with millions of dollars worth of diamonds, rubys, and sapphires... but step on it and your shoe will still smell like crap.

[mranonymous]

their ads better be really, really good. But it would've cost less than $100m to come up with a name that doesn't remind everyone of a cash register...
I can imagine 'bing' coming into common use as a verb, but not meaning 'to do an internet search for'. more likely 'to scam": "Aw man, I thought I was getting a deal on that computer but I got binged. Never gonna let those microsoft @#&%! bing me again"

[Evildave]

Now, now. Don't underestimate the power of advertising and product placement, and improvising a 'standard'. When they patch IE to use their own search engine and make it a pain in the butt for users to change it back to google, they'll automatically get millions of new clueless sheeple using their search engine, and this is just the sort of thing Micro$oft has always done and gotten into all kinds of trouble over the years doing. Probably Windoze 7 will ship with Micro$oft's search engine 'heavily integrated' by default, and nobody else's will plug in in such an integrated manner (if at all), because it's Micro$oft's technology and they don't have to release an SDK for it until after it goes live (LONG after), giving Micro$oft months of artificially inflated use with all new users, which they can then scam other companies into believing means that Micro$oft's search engine is being adopted by eager people, rather than their typical trapped sheeple.

And then advertising. Lots of clueless people don't even know to go to google.com to 'google' something. When Microsoft spends the time and money to 'educate them' how Micro$oft's Bung can find Micro$oft products and services to do whatever the user wants with Micro$oft products and services, and it's presented by dreamy actors and sexy little hotties, and offer prizes and discounts with Micro$oft business partners, people will use their search by the millions... for a little while. You know for sure Micro$oft won't spend any of their marketing capital to educate the clueless about how there are OTHER search engines that work better.

I mean, just look at spam email. They keep sending out billions of emails because one moron among 10,000 annoyed people will respond, and that's still hundreds of thousands of customers.

[Evildave]

Nah. Bung. As in bunged up. A kludge. A stopgap means of stopping a leak. That sort of thing. Not to mention The Great Cornholio, who needs TP for his bung-hole.

[slappy]

You know I hope they do call this thing "Bing". Goes well with "Squirt" and "Zune" names.
"Bing me that Zune you Squirt".

[lordmorgul]

Do you see Cuil taking massive market share from Google? No? That is because that style of search result (related content you probably only meant to search for if you are a clueless idiot who didn't know what he wanted to search for) is not what everyone wants...
The general search user is much more adept at picking keywords to search for these days. You don't need much more than keyword suggestions to rapidly narrow down your searches so that 'related' is not what you're looking for anymore. You find what you wanted instead of searching for what you did not want and poking around until you found what showed up!
MS will fail with Bing as badly as with Live Search. What they might manage to do is kill off any of the progress Cuil.com is making, which seems to be fairly little enough as is.

[rview]

Twin Bing is the name of a candy bar. It also looks like the name goes with a few companies.

[Aerospaced]

IMHO if the MS track record is true then we will see a roll out, a flop and 5-10 years of fixing it on the fly.
It seems the business model of the day is to get it out there and make it work later. All those who want the latest and greatest will pay a premium price to have it. In this case the potential price to pay could be the security of your computer or browsing activity.
A "Google killer" isn't that what those bums at Cuil said too? What's worse is that they actually worked for Google too!
When Bing or whatever it's going to be called hits the web, comes out the first thing I will search is "Blue screen of death" and see if they acknowledge it.

[dennisl59]

I will bet One Trillion Dollars that MS will use the same knucklehead ad agency that brought us the Jerry and Bill Insanity. (yes, the same ad agency that did the bob squarepants/burgerking spots). The focus groups are all on some kind of mind altering drugs. Bada-Bing!

Message was edited by: smax013 - No profanity please...even "disguised" profanity.

[sfoalex]

dennisl59 said:

I will bet One Trillion Dollars that MS will use the same knucklehead ad agency that brought us the Jerry and Bill Insanity. (yes, the same ad agency that did the bob squarepants/burgerking spots). The f-ing focus groups are all on some kind of mind altering drugs. Bada-Bing!

I hate those ads. Every last one of them. Horrible!

[mpheadley]

I also raised my eyebrows at "Bing". It just sounds like a big corporation trying too hard to be cool and give a web site a cool name like google or twitter.
I like Kumo much better!