We've got Google, Yahoo, and now Bing

[UKBusinessLive]

We've got Google, Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves and Dogpile, among others. Now Microsoft has re-launched its search engine as Bing.com. So, what makes a good search engine name?

A new kid has arrived on the search engine block as you all know, But what makes a great Search engine name, and can we come up with something better??

Microsoft's Bing has joined the web's big-hitters, Google and Yahoo!, in their mission to help internet users navigate the web's resources.

The computer giant hopes the new search, which updates its old MSN search, will help it gain a bigger share of the search market - with Google currently taking 64%, Yahoo! 20% and Microsoft, despite being the biggest player in the software market, a paltry 8.2%.

Among the crop of more recent search enterprises is Wolfram Alpha, a computation knowledge engine named after its creator, Cuil, from the Gaelic for knowledge, and hazel (that's a lowercase "h"). So what makes a successful search engine name?

Part of the beauty of Google as a name is that it has no real meaning, although some believe it comes from .

When "Google" started it was not a universally known word, but it is now a universally known term and is even a verb - to Google. As soon as you try to make it [a name] functional it is less interesting - less memorable."

In fact, Google derives from a functional term, googol - 10 raised to the hundredth power - but this had the benefit of being so little known it didn't confuse the masses.

Another serch site Wolfram Alpha, has only just started but try remembering that, its too long a name and one that you'll find hard to remember, So we come back to "Bing" will it suceed where so many others have failed.

It might explain the rebranding of Ask Jeeves, several years ago, to Ask.com. Although not entirely. Ask.com reverted to its original name earlier this year, and brought back its iconic butler character, after research revealed that users missed his "friendly, human touch".

But with catchy dotcom domain names in short supply - most have already been bought up - any budding search engine creator also needs to think practically about whether a suitable name is available to be bought.

Of course, a snappy name isn't everything - there's also the technology that sits behind it. The CBS-owned Search.com must surely lay claim to the best search name ever, but have you ever used it?

Lets Remember also Bing.com is not a NEW domain The bing.com domain name was first registered in late January 1996, just one year after yahoo.com and a year before google.com.

In its early incarnation, the name Bing belonged to a Colorado company trying to sell a "personal notification device" it described as "the first practical solution to personal and discrete cell phone ring notification."

So what was this "practical" and "discrete" solution? It was evidently a small contraption that would vibrate remotely when your cell phone rang. "Bing allows a person to keep their Mobile phone in a pocket, purse, briefcase, heavy coat, in another room, or anywhere up to a few hundred feet away, and be notified of a Mobile phone call without attracting attention and without having to 'wear' a clunky phone on his or her hip," an early version of bing.com explained.

By 2006, the Bing notification device had buzzed out of existence and bing.com had gone back to being a parked domain. Toward the end of that year, though, someone else snatched up the domain and tried to put the "cha-ching" back into Bing.

The bing.com domain records were last updated this March and now indicate the site is owned by "Microsoft Corporation" at One Microsoft Way in Redmond. A tiny blue, orange, and white logo has appeared in the site's favicon -- that little square box that pops up next to the URL in your browser -- on and off during the day. It shows a lowercase "b" with a white-outlined orange circle inside.

So it appears that Microsoft didn't come up with the name, Just used one that was already avaialable, just like all things microsoft, I wonder how much they paid for the Domain

http://web.archive.org/web/200502100.../www.bing.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/200611062...tp://bing.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/200802091...1/au.bing.com/



Take the Poll and we'll see if Bing is a good one, Its a multi vote so tick all that apply