Microsoft Rebrands Live Search As "Bing"

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.'"

Comments

Long-term pattern

[psydeshow]

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.

Hotels in Dublin

[TheNinjaroach]

Of course I didn't RTFA, but I did visit bing.com to watch a promotional video - which surprising enough wasn't done in Silverlight. Two things about this promotional video really stuck out about how bad Microsoft really wants to be Google.

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.