‘Bing’ Seems to Be the Name

of the new search engine from Microsoft. Maximum PC  is declaring that Kumo is out, and Bing is in. Funny, I thought I read that Bing had been problematic, as it was already taken, but I guess it has been fixed. Apparently, the careful application of money took care of the problem.

As I reported before, the $100 million figure is about right, as it is confirmed by the article, by way of Advertising Age.

Ready, aim, SPEND! That’s the approach Microsoft is planning for Bing, its new search engine, Advertising Age reports. How much coin is Redmond prepared to spend to market Bing (previously code-named Kumo)? Somewhere is the $80-100 million range, Ad Age says, compared to Google’s non-recruitment ad spending in 2008 of around $13 million. But, can spending 6-8 times as much as Google give Bing the jump it needs?

Microsoft’s ad push (helmed by ad-agency powerhouse JWT) will not, unlike the recent anti-Apple campaign, mention Microsoft’s search rivals – instead, the planned ads will ask consumers if search works as well as they’d like.

How about the product itself?

People who’ve seen the Microsoft product suggest it’s useful and has some nifty filtering tools, even though it’s not a markedly different-looking interface, at least for text search (some of the multimedia search results, however, do look quite different from how Google currently displays them).

When will Bing shove aside Live Search? The Register says “June,” and also suggests keeping an eye on the D: All Things Digital conference this week for more details.

Microsoft could have helped the economy by simply ‘bribing’ every citizen to do five searches, with the promise of sending them $5, and we would all be better off. It is truly amazing how much money some companies waste on things -  I’m sure that Google is laughing uncontrollably right about now.

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he laughs and spends with abandon…

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