From Live to Bing, What is Microsoft Thinking?

Only at Microsoft can they decide to rebrand something and people are still going what? What in the world? So last week, my circle of friends all started talking about Bing. Why? Our husbands all came home and told us that Microsoft is rebranding live to bing. One of the moms said her husband came home and said, what do you think of Bing? She said, “we are not naming our son Bing”. Then he went on to explain what it was. All of us moms are like, bing?

I just don’t get it how is changing your name going to help you in the on-line business. Here is what they had to say:

You probably didn’t wake up today expecting an entirely new search experience.
But – Bing! – here it is.
So, why a new search engine? Why the new name? Why now?
Well, because even though search is a pretty amazing thing, the current state of search engines has some equally amazing statistics.
So far in 2009, there are four and a half websites created EVERY SECOND as the web continues to expand. While more searchable information is cool, nearly half of all searches don’t result in the answer that people are seeking.
At the same time, the way the world searches is changing. You want more than just information. You want knowledge that leads to action.
The truth is you’ve evolved. It’s time search caught up.
So we had an idea. Start over. And we did.
We took a new approach to go beyond search to build what we call a decision engine. With a powerful set of intuitive tools on top of a world class search service, Bing will help you make smarter, faster decisions. We included features that deliver the best results, presented in a more organized way to simplify key tasks and help you make important decisions faster.
And features like cashback, where we actually give you money back on great products, and Price Predictor, which actually tells you when to buy an airline ticket in order to help get you the best price – help you make smarter decisions, and put money back in your pocket.
We sincerely hope that the next time you need to make an important decision, you’ll Bing and decide.
Thank you,
Bing Team, Microsoft

So it is a lot prettier. I went and watched some of their informational videos and found that Microsoft is third in the list of search engines, but why would moms switch to Bing when they can use search engines that earn them points like My Points or Swagbucks. They say that they do have a cash back feature but I couldn’t find it. Wired wrote up a review for it and said that it is on its way to being more than a search engine, maybe a search portal including reviews, and score cards for restaurants and an excellent travel search, but the layout is confusing. I didn’t find the lay out confusing but I didn’t get any searches that I was looking for. It’s sad when I was looking for a review and I had to go over to Google to find it. I found another review. One by Joseph Tartakoff and I agree with him even more. There are shortcomings but it provides so many different things that I’ll use it in addition to other search engines. The best thing they did to get me to use it was the live bar in IE already takes you to the Bing search engine.

Oh and it was going to be named Kumo, which I like better than Bing, but my husband said Kumo is for computer nerds, that’s why they decided to name it Bing.