The news that Microsoft is launching a new search engine called “Bing” has been covered extensively so I won’t go into any details about this new service that will launch on 3rd June. I was, however, amused by the coverage in Business Week of the Bing press launch.
John Fine wrote “Microsoft chose Bing, Ballmer said, because it wanted a short one-syllable name that could “verb up”—in the way people say “Xeroxing” copies or “Googling” search results—and was inoffensive in several languages.” Now apart from the fact that “verb up” is a horrible term, I’m amazed that there were no journalists sharp enough to point out that both Google and Xerox are two syllable words!
