"Sure I have a one year plan!...But I'm not going to share it with you."
- Steve Ballmer
- Steve Ballmer
Yesterday at D7, Steve Ballmer (apart from showing off ZuneHD) showed a public demonstration of the new Microsoft search engine known as Bing that is to debut June 1st. Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal interviewed Ballmer, and as always provides fun conversation and great questions.
"Why the name?"
"...Microsoft is in single digits in terms of search engines (use)."
"Microsoft has a lot of children, what makes this one special?"
Really though, all the talk flying around isn't about the demo Ballmer showed off. It's actually entirely about the name.
Personally, it looks "useful," but I can't weigh functionality because its one of those private test demos where everything is setup to work perfectly. Just see the following Microsoft video as proof.
I digress, the point is Bing in its little controlled environment looks promising. It's doing massive web aggregation and it looks great doing it. It's clearly a huge advantage over Google and a tabbed browser interface, in that you google something and "Open in New Tab" a bunch of results while you keep searching. This seems to almost end that style of browsing. I can't figure out if this is a good thing or not. But when I think of the "world at my fingertips" as we've all been told since the internet became a big thing...this kind of interface seems to be what comes to mind. I shouldn't have to do endless browsing through websites only to return to my search results. Again this thing seems promising.
But Bing? Seriously even as a Microsoft supporter I still occasionally question motives, like "Why the hell does Internet Explorer still suck at life?" or "Why the hell did you have to create Silverlight?" or "How the hell did you arrive at the term 'Bing' ?" It prompted me to go out on a mission and ask some people at random "When I say Bing, what comes to mind?" Here for your reading pleasure and laughter are the responses.
"Why the name?"
"...Microsoft is in single digits in terms of search engines (use)."
"Microsoft has a lot of children, what makes this one special?"
Really though, all the talk flying around isn't about the demo Ballmer showed off. It's actually entirely about the name.
Personally, it looks "useful," but I can't weigh functionality because its one of those private test demos where everything is setup to work perfectly. Just see the following Microsoft video as proof.
I digress, the point is Bing in its little controlled environment looks promising. It's doing massive web aggregation and it looks great doing it. It's clearly a huge advantage over Google and a tabbed browser interface, in that you google something and "Open in New Tab" a bunch of results while you keep searching. This seems to almost end that style of browsing. I can't figure out if this is a good thing or not. But when I think of the "world at my fingertips" as we've all been told since the internet became a big thing...this kind of interface seems to be what comes to mind. I shouldn't have to do endless browsing through websites only to return to my search results. Again this thing seems promising.
But Bing? Seriously even as a Microsoft supporter I still occasionally question motives, like "Why the hell does Internet Explorer still suck at life?" or "Why the hell did you have to create Silverlight?" or "How the hell did you arrive at the term 'Bing' ?" It prompted me to go out on a mission and ask some people at random "When I say Bing, what comes to mind?" Here for your reading pleasure and laughter are the responses.
"The Sopranos."
- Matt, Kyle
"I had a cat named Bing Bong."
"The sound of someone throwing something at your head."
"The cartoon sound of someone spitting into a spittoon."
- Jacqueline
"A button popping up, like bright red plastic kids toy sorta thing."
- Nayan
"Crosby."
- Mike, Jacqueline, CJ, Chris, Tony, Alex
"Bada."
- Kim, Kyle
"Chandler."
- Angie, Scott
I love obscure questioning like this, because the second I said "Well it's actually Microsoft's new search engine to compete with Google." People immediatley started scratching their heads with that look of questioning on their face. "Bing, hrm...bing."
Never the less, the name is decided and final, and if you are really interested head over to www.bing.com to see a short promotional video for the service.
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