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Comments: 443 +- Technology: Microsoft Rebrands Live Search As "Bing" on Thursday May 28 2009, @12:01PM
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by
timothy
on Thursday May 28 2009, @12:01PM
from the after-sherlock-holmes'-more-obscure-brother dept.
from the after-sherlock-holmes'-more-obscure-brother dept.
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JacobSteelsmith writes "Microsoft is attempting to re-brand its Live Search, also known as Kumo. Bing, as it's known, is another attempt by Microsoft to lure consumers away from Internet search leaders such as Google. Microsoft has posted a quarterly loss in its online advertising business, compared to Google's sales, $4.7 billion in the first quarter. According to the Live Search blog, Bing goes 'beyond the traditional search engines to help you make faster, more informed decisions' by combining a 'great search engine' with organized results. It also adds unique tools to help the user make important decisions. It is being touted as a 'decision engine.'"
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Hmmmm... (Score:5, Funny)
"Here, let me bing that for you."
Hmmmm... No.
Re:Hmmmm... (Score:5, Funny)
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But What If ... (Score:5, Funny)
Bing! Fries are done! Hmm. Progress, but still no dice...
True, however:
... thank god for bing."
Developer One: "You know that hot girl I met at the bar last night?"
Developer Two: "Yeah?"
Developer One: "I bing'd her."
Developer Two: "No way! What did you find?"
Developer One: "Bing says she's categorized as head of a right wing conservative group that attracts females and funnels money into Karl Rove."
Developer Two: "Ohhh, dude that sucks, maybe next time?"
Developer One: "Yeah
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Re:But What If ... (Score:4, Funny)
Can I have her number?
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Re:But What If ... (Score:5, Funny)
You can bing it.
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Re:But What If ... (Score:4, Funny)
Bing fathered my baby!
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Re:But What If ... (Score:4, Funny)
Uh, into what part of Karl Rove are they funneling that money? Sounds... unsanitary.
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Re:But What If ... (Score:5, Funny)
How can you possibly imagine that such a phrase could mean "I searched the web for information on her?" "I bing'd her" can only mean "I banged her," "I nailed her," "I balled her lights out," etc.
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Re:But What If ... (Score:4, Funny)
No, it's bing, bong, then bang...
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Re:Hmmmm... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Hmmmm... (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, it's much better for you to bing than than to squirt anything from your Zune if you live in Quebec [macworld.co.uk].
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Re:Hmmmm... (Score:5, Funny)
There, fixed that for you.
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Re:Hmmmm... (Score:5, Funny)
A more apt name from Steve would have been "Fling" ... I'm thinking chairs here.
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Bing? Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bing? Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, on a web site focused on FOSS the readership will now complain about the name selected by Microsoft for their search engine.
Some examples of the naming accumen of the FOSS crowd:
- Ogg Vorbis
- Gimp
- Apache
- IceWeasel
- Thunderbird
- X
- Gnome
- Prefacing thousands of KDE apps with K
- Gnu
- A thousand other recursive acronyms
- etc etc etc
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Wii (Score:4, Informative)
If the Slashdot crowd's reaction to a new brand has any predictive power, then Bing is going to be a big hit.
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/27/1625208 [slashdot.org]
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Re:Bing? Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Bing? Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
<VOICE type="Chandler Bing">
Could this branding be any more lame?
</VOICE>
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I went to google the answer, but this damn computer has the wrong search installed and my question went down the bung hole!
I love how the live desktop search tells you everything install chronologically after it is going to stop functioning if you remove the MS search. Well, maybe bung will finally let you find answers to technical issues half as well as google search - then MS might be able to bribe some more people to play with it's b
Re:Bing? Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
It's just that (4) isn't clear.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bing? Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actualy it's:
They're still in step 3.
-dZ.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"Have you tried looking underneath your belt?"
"Not that bong, Bob. The other bong."
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If "Bing" fails, the next name will be "Squirt".
But won't that confuse the 2 owners of a Zune who have been squirting songs to each other?
We use the search engine that goes bing! (Score:5, Funny)
This has Monty Python written all over it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
organized results (Score:5, Insightful)
Bing goes 'beyond the traditional search engines to help you make faster, more informed decisions' by combining a 'great search engine' with organized results.
Organized Results as in "higher rating the more you pay us"?
Re:organized results (Score:5, Insightful)
Organised as in for example, you type in a particular model of a camera, and the results are organised between - where to buy, reviews, how to use the thing, etc.
It sounds quite good, if it works as described.
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Re:organized results (Score:5, Funny)
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Here's the problem (Score:5, Funny)
They change the search engine's name in an effort to draw a crowd, then they fuck it up by weighing it down with language that's awful damn close to the infinitely-scalable enterprise class web 2.0 productivity enhancement solution corporatespeak that makes people roll their eyes.
My first thought... (Score:5, Funny)
Phil: "Ned? Ned Ryerson?"
Ned: "BING!"
Re:My first thought... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup. Another example of that brilliant Microsoft marketing machine we've all heard about.
I mean, when I think of cool and trendy, I think of Ned Ryerson. Wouldn't everyone want to buy insurance from that guy? Wouldn't everyone want him to do their searches?
The truth is that Microsoft has never had much marketing ability. They just have tons of cash to throw at it, and they've always been good at leveraging monopoly power in one market to win the next. They leveraged their PC DOS monopoly to win the PC GUI environment market with Windows. They leveraged that to win the office suite market. They used their office suite dominance to wipe out Novell by giving big corporations huge Office discounts if they replaced their Novell servers with NT Server. They then leveraged NT Server's dominance to gain dominance in Back Office products like Exchange and IIS. Marketing has had little to do with their success. They of course also tied IE to Windows to thwart Netscape. And every time you installed a new copy of IE it defaulted to msn.com as the home page, otherwise MSN never would have had any market share. The list goes on and on.
We finally come to search engines. Other than making Windows and/or IE default to using Live Search, or whatever it gets rebranded to, they really just don't have much power to tie it to any of the markets they currently dominate.
Guess only time will tell, but I'll be amazed if they gain more than a percent or two from Google in the search market, because I can't see any compelling reason to switch from what I've read so far.
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Give up (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
MS should seriously just stop trying to "improve" search engines. Its not profitable, labels you as a "Google clone", and unless you have some pretty neat features that can beat Google and iGoogle, you won't end up capturing any marketshare.
This same attitude showed up in the Zune HD story. I find it an idiotic viewpoint. Because one company has done something really well, nobody else should try? Do you seriously want people to stop trying to compete and trying to one-up other companies, just because the existing product or service seems to be all you could ever want?
You want things to stagnate?
Granted, we know MS will fail. But suggesting that they shouldn't try seems positively idiotic.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I can already tell it's going to suck... (Score:5, Insightful)
...because the video shows a big image/background at the top. That's great, but part of the other reason Google is the leader (other than the results it produces) is the fact the page is a no-nonsense zone - sure, you've got the Google logo, but other than that, the page consists nearly entirely of blank space, or text/links. No stupid pointless pictures, no needless button images. It's fast, and it works. Once 'Bing' gets up to capacity though, I reckon it'll be dog slow, because it has useless decor. The search engine isn't the destination: So why the pointless crap?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, sorry, forgot it's slashdot... you probably haven't actually tried anything but the crowd-recommended solution.
Yeah, it's totally lame and not nonconformist to use a search engine that doesn't suck.
Re:I can already tell it's going to suck... (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at the difference between gmail and hotmail. Gmail has a clean interface, and it's quick and snappy. The newly-redesigned (yet still crappy) hotmail has a cluttered, less usable interface full of minor annoyances, AND it's a sluggish buggy piece of shit.
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B.I.N.G.? (Score:5, Funny)
Bing Is Not Google
Re:B.I.N.G.? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Terminology (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft may have posted a quarterly loss, but comparing that with 4.7 billion dollars of gross revenue doesn't even make sense. Did Google make a profit on that 4.7 billion and how much? That's the important question, and none of the press releases linked here have an answer.
Re:Terminology (Score:5, Informative)
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cashback? (Score:5, Informative)
According to the Why Bing [decisionengine.com] page:
The price predictor thing sound kinda cool (though pretty easy to clone).
But giving money back on "great products?" Is that like discounts on MS software, or some other silly gimmick? Smells faintly like desperation, that does. I guess we'll see.
Bing! (Score:5, Funny)
Ned: Phil? Hey, Phil? Phil! Phil Connors? Phil Connors, I thought that was you!
Phil: Hi, how you doing? Thanks for watching.
[Starts to walk away]
Ned: Hey, hey! Now, don't you tell me you don't remember me because I sure as heckfire remember you.
Phil: Not a chance.
Ned: Ned... Ryerson. "Needlenose Ned"? "Ned the Head"? C'mon, buddy. Case Western High. Ned Ryerson: I did the whistling belly-button trick at the high school talent show? Bing! Ned Ryerson: got the shingles real bad senior year, almost didn't graduate? Bing, again. Ned Ryerson: I dated your sister Mary Pat a couple times until you told me not to anymore? Well?
Phil: Ned Ryerson?
Ned: Bing!
Phil: Bing.
What's going on (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a little confused, but as best I can figure out:
Microsoft is developing a new search engine that will replace Live Search. The new engine was going to be called Kumo, but they've decided to call it Bing instead. It's still in development and not yet available to the public, but eventually it will be online at bing.com. Presumably, once Bing launches, live.com will redirect there. The search field on msn.com (which most IE users have set as their home page) will redirect there too.
Since the new engine isn't available to the public and most people weren't aware that it was going to be called Kumo, this rebranding is a complete non-story.
Long-term pattern (Score:5, Interesting)
Among Microsoft's many problems as a company is that they seem to systematically change the names of their products every few years. This is an incredibly wasteful policy. Every time they enact one of these name changes they:
- throw out years' worth of marketing effort
- break documentation and references throughout their website
- break third-party web resources, including howtos, forum advice, and other forms of community support
- force everyone who has to support the product to change all of their references, documentation, marketing, etc.
Why MS shareholders and partners don't see name churn as having a real, damaging impact on the company's long-term success is beyond me.
All that money into marketing ... (Score:4, Insightful)
How many millions (billions?!) do they spend on marketing and branding. If I paid that much, and all they came up with was Zune, Squirt and Bing .. I'd be pissed and would want a refund.
Hotels in Dublin (Score:5, Interesting)
The first thing that struck me was the name. Over time Google's name has become a verb, you can "Google It" (tm) for yourself. So Microsoft innovates the only way they know how by scheduling a series of marketing meetings for their droids to come up with a name that out-verbs the competition. "Bing" there you have it, an uninspired and pathetic attempt to squeeze a brand name into our common vernacular.
The second thing that really caught my attention in the video was the first search they show. While the narrator goes on about revolutionary new ways to search the internet, he pulls up Bing to search for "Hotels in Dublin" - a natural way to search for hotels near Dublin that Google implemented into their mapping engine years ago. Just as the search itself was ripped off from Google, so are the results. A map of Dublin pops up with a number of icons, each representing a hotel exactly as Google did... years ago.
Bing's marketing narrator continues on about these "new ways to search" that feel so familiar, and well, old. I'm not convinced they have anything new to offer, but maybe if they keep saying "Bing" enough they will at least convince themselves. I think the only people who will "Bing" anything in the near future are the same ones who have always used Live Search simply because it was available by default.
CROSBY (Score:4, Insightful)
not the town in North Dakota.
For my generation Bing is followed by Crosby.
I am sure the people at MSFT are to young to have that association,
Re:I think they might have someone (Score:5, Funny)
You forgot "~" at the end of first sentence.
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