Biggest Post Gates Microsoft Product is BING

Have you heard of or seen the commercials yet for Bing.com?  Well, if you haven’t heard of it yet you will.  Microsoft is expected to spend $80–$100 million advertising Bing.  Bing.com may be the biggest new product to come from Microsoft since Bill Gates stepped down as CEO.

In some respects “Bing” is the new name for a revamped version of Microsoft Live Search. What started as MSN Search became Live Search and now Bing. The joke with old techies has always been that it takes three versions before Microsoft finally gets things right. 

The name choice is brilliant. I suspect having this easy to remember name will be helpful in gaining public interest.  No, it wasn’t named after Chandler Bing from NBC’s “Friends”. Bing is actually an obsolete verb from the mid sixteenth century that means “to go”. In the 17^th century U.K. started to use the noun “Bing” to indicate a pile of something.

There’s really a lot of layers to Bing. I’ll be posting a more detailed review of Bing in the near future but for now I feel very comfortable advising you to make the switch to Bing.  It’s certainly worth giving it a try and you may just get comfortable with the new Bing user experience.

Click to add Bing to Internet Explorer.

The swing to “Bing.com” may be the biggest threat to Google’s dominance in the search engine business. Still, I wouldn’t count Google out completely. They’ve been quietly updating their search results engine. Expect the next revision of Google to customize your search results based on your location and other metrics related to your history. I also expect Google’s home page will finally introduce more graphics and personalization now that average web speeds have increased.

The biggest problem I worry about in the Search Wars isn’t going to be online, it’s going to be on your computer.  Both Microsoft and Google have a history of being over aggressive at retaining your search preferences. While your browser offers you the ability to change your default search engine other programs often work at keeping that status quo. This can result in an internal battle in your computer with each program changing default search settings back and forth.