What’s In a Name?

by Danielle Smith on 06/02/2009 at 1:30 pm in Industry News, Opinion Editorial, Within Range

Not to compete with all the truly credible press out there currently swirling around in cyberspace, but I’m going to weigh in on Bing, MSN’s latest search engine scheme. I’m not here to give you the technical reasons why I think MSN’s latest venture Bing will be a success or failure. What I am here to do is talk about the name and a couple of anecdotes that have come about since it was first released.

Apparently, the idea behind Bing is that it should convey to the user the sound that is made when a light bulb goes off in one’s head, like what happens when Wile E. Coyote gets a great idea or when you solve a Rubik’s cube. My colleagues and I chatted about this at length, and we determined that Bing is not the sound that at all goes off in our heads at the point of enlightenment.

For me the sound is an obvious ‘ting’ with some vibrato to it. For my good friend Brian, who tends to be more left brained, the sound is much more course and sharp. We did our best to find it but the closest we could find was ‘e-spark2’. Ding also seemed to be a very popular reponse. Eureka, gasp, AH!….on and on and on. This other guy thought it sounded like the bell on the counter of a cheap motel.

Later, I brought the discussion to the car. Since my daughter and spend a lot of time in the vehicle, and there is usually a lot of empty air to fill, I asked her what she thought about Bing. She’s never been much for short and sweet so her answer didn’t surprise me in the least. A very animated, “wait, wait, I got it, I know this one.” To be honest we both concurred that might be a little long and cumbersome to remember at the keyboard.

Whatever the sound, we’ll see if MSN’s new search is worth me switching from Googling to Binging anytime soon.