Chinese, as a character-based language is obviously tricky to translate into English. But following today’s launch of Microsoft’s new oddly-named search engine, Bing, the world wants to know what it means. We have an answer.
While you might associate “bing” with the Chinese flatbread, or a number of other things that Wired broke down. We were sent perhaps the ultimate translation in the form of a fortune cookie that just happened to pop up after someone’s dinner tonight. One translation for “bing” is apparently “disease.” Some more digging on the web indicates this as well.
So while that is slightly less subtle than Microsoft’s former search property, live, spelling “evil” backwards, it’s another interesting name choice by Microsoft. I’d hope they didn’t plant the bing definition in that fortune cookie as part of its elaborate $100 million marketing campaign — though, come to think of it, that might not be a bad play.
[Thanks Stephen]
I associate bing with Chandler Bing from the friends show.
totally
Same here. That’s what always comes to mind. Chandler Bing!!!
I can’t get Bing Crosby or Bing cherries (yummy ice cream!) out of my head.
Maybe they want an easy association? Or something annoying that sticks with you – like the TV ad jingle/slogan that drives everyone crazy: “Head On” – “Apply directly to the forehead…”
Seems to be working – a whole post just for the name.
btw: “bing” is a pile of something – wood, metal, etc.
Bin, Bing, Bingo – whatever, great choice of name by Microsoft. Btw, did they think of “evil”, when they named “live” or is it just MG’s discovery?
(Nice to hear MG say something else other than Twitterlogues).
Holy christ.
I was wondering why Bing sounded so BAD.
This is the other association: http://www.sopr...68_badabing.jpg
They really should have gone with Sift.
One of many possible ad campaigns.
Maybe, Microsoft would do anything to make people bing!
Bing Crosby
its good – but its not google
And search is a winner-takes-all market.
So, nice try, but no cigar.
BING=Bing Is Not Good. Heheh. But seriously everyone who’s seen it is raving about it. I guess the rest of us will have to wait for next week.
People who have seen it are mostly PR folks. No wonder they “like” it because they got some cash for liking it!
BING = “Bing Is Not Google”
How come I’m thin on contract work and Scoble is still kicking around and paying HIS bills?
Shyte.
“Google” wasn’t “Google” either when it first came out. “Goggle”? people were sayig, shaking their heads. Except for the math-types who were able to explain what that a google is a very large number.
Google didn’t have all the various cultural baggage that Bing has. Bing is already well established with all kinds of connotations.
MS always picks really generic single word names. They always pick names that are bigger than they are, that’s why none of their more recent brands carry any sway.
Live, it’s so generic it’s meaningless. When you say ‘Live’ guarantee most people do not think of a third rate search engine. Too big, generic, meaningless as is MS these days.
Hilarious post… I associate bing with the strip club in The Sopranos.
Lets see if this spreads out everywhere
BING stands for:
Bring It Now Google
Disease is perfect for Microsoft. They plan to be a cancer to Google.
Cancer to Google or cancerous themselves?
Actually the brand in China will be “必应 Bing”, these characters in Chinese are pronounced “bee-ying” and are part of a Chinese proverb “有求必应”, which means “ask and you shall find”.
Hey Steve, this is Kiam Choo. Congratulations on Bing; can’t wait to try it out. To all detractors on the name, tell them bing also means “ice” — cuz it’s gonna be cool.
see definition and stroke order here
http://www.ncik...7%97%85/1301071
I look forward to a time when URL squatting does not dictate a brand or company name…are we ready to start using naming conventions that “mean” something again?
Then again, I guess “General Motors” meant something once. Maybe silly names like Topsy (no offense) or Twitter (great name) are the way to go.
-LA
This is a weird name. But if you think about it, so was Google. It was, after all, named after a number (just spelled differently).
I think Microsoft had the right idea by choosing a name like this. It is funny that is means “disease” in Chinese.
I believe MG & Danny Sullivan already speculated that Microsoft should hire Chandler BING from FRIENDS to promote it.
Has to be better than those Seinfeld commercials.
,Michael Martin
Google And Blog
Ha ha yes, we did.
MG Siegler: The guy Arrington trusts to come up with something crappy to say about Microsoft and Microsoft products without fail.
And the guy Arrington found to replace Duncan Riley in order to manufacture news too?
Funny i was fooled by Siegler when he first started, i was a fan. Later i discovered that he was no other than a Apple Fanboy, made me vomit in my mouth. I have confirm Siegler is an IDIOT!
Wow. Turning to fortune cookies for story ideas. Things are looking mighty slim…
Well.. they probably are out off twitter stories
One the silliest posts on TechCrunch ever, what the hell, Bing is good name, short, very rememberable, and a very web2ish kind of name
This is what damage the reputation of Bloggs when things are so bias… instead of really really get into the merits of Bing they go with this. We need competition in this space… Wellcome Bing !!
In addition to flat bread, disease that bing sounds like in Chinese, may I add another one, that sounds like the third class, third grade.
With 必应Chinese character to pair up with Bing, that shows Microsoft understand the unique dynamics in China. As far as I remember, this is a first for Microsoft to closely align and reflect a Chinese association and phonetics into the brand.
The direct translation for 必应 “Bi-ying” is ‘certain to respond’ or ‘ready to answer’.
reminds me a post in TC where similar remarks were made on hulu. who cares on the name as long as it has stuff that users like.
For me bing sounds cool. MS has to work hard to move my search from google, but i am just one click away.
Aren’t pretty much all languages ‘character-based’?
I love it. TC at its best – constantly taking the piss out of MS with little or no justification and lavishing praise on Google without any criticism whatsoever. I’ll be honest: I use a Macbook Pro, I use open office and I use google. But seriously, a little unbiased ‘reporting’ for once… please.
No kdding. MG is such a Mactard, Google ass kisser. What a hack.
Bing: Bing Is Not Google (or) Bing Is Not Good
That’s from @scoble.
But it still does look cool and interesting.
Thanks,
Zachary Collins
http://www.twtbase.com
Wow, what a bunch of silly little petty people at Techcrunch.
And, by the way you are TOTALLY wrong…
According to Dr. Qi Lu, who thought about going back to live in his native China before accepting Steve Ballmer’s offer to head up Microsoft’s search effort, Bing means something a little more positive in Chinese:
“Bing” also resonates with an audience Google is yet to dominate: China.
“The actual Chinese characters are two characters, ‘Bi’ and ‘Ing’ and combined these two characters mean ‘very certain to respond’ and ‘very certain to answer’,” Dr Lu said.
“That’s a terrific representation of what our brand stands for in the Chinese language.”
So, please get your facts right or at least your stupid childish opinions before making up such diatribe.
Ironic (mis)use of the word ‘diatribe’.
The post is petty, yes, but at no point a diatribe. Your comment, on the otherhand, whilst of some interest, is.
Chinese is a syllabic tone language: many characters, hence many words, have the same pronunciation. So “bing” could refer to bīng, bíng, bǐng or bìng, and there are several different characters for each of these pronunciations. Actually, there are 16 of them:
http://www.ncik...all/pinyin/ping
So saying “bing = 病” is a bit of a shortcut, as far as Chinese goes.
Ballmer pronounced it in D7 as bìng so ultimately = 病.
When the tired Esso gasoline brand was to be rebranded, Standard Oil (SO, get it) asked the branding experts to make sure that the replacement name kept the identity, but did not linguistically offend in any language.
The brand consultancy knew that the ‘double X’ was only used in Maltese surnames. They were aware that competitor Getty had a problem in one language (dirty carburetor in some dialect of Portuguese, for all I know).
Exxon was chosen as a result of computer modeling and linguistic sorting.
So Bing, there you go.
Bing could also be ice or army/soldier. And the 必应 “biying” idea is far better than Google’s 谷歌 “guge,” which conventional wisdom says sounds boring or unrelated, meaning roughly “valley song.”
Way to leave out the the truth here…
“Bing” also resonates with an audience Google is yet to dominate: China.
“The actual Chinese characters are two characters, ‘Bi’ and ‘Ing’ and combined these two characters mean ‘very certain to respond’ and ‘very certain to answer’,” Dr Lu said.
“That’s a terrific representation of what our brand stands for in the Chinese language.”
the actual pronounciation of disease in chinese (cantonese dialect) sounds more like “beng” or “bang” than “bing”. as i’ve seen over and over again, the direct translation of chinese characters and pronounciation to english comes up often with misguided spellings; and hence idiot articles like this.
There are six sounds for the general pinion character “i”. It can also mean ice or pancake…
useless post, TechCrunch
Ricochet Rabbit, “Bing, bing, bing.”
Love to see them use a clip in an ad if they intend to tout Bing’s speed.
b-i-n-g is twice as fast and easier to type than g-o-o-g-l-e.
If Microsoft can convince people that bing.com is just as good as google.com, then people will flock towards it simply because it’s easier to type in.
There’s no question that this is an excellent name on all counts. In all my time on the creative side of marketing, I have never seen a company take such care to align their name closely with Mandarin and Cantonese equivalents. Or find a name that works across so many languages (because of the onomotopoiea). Despite the fun and games on this blog, I can’t imagine a better name cross-linguistically or in terms of a URL. The whole poetry part, “Sound of Found,” is a bit over the top, but http://www.bing.com is pretty spectacular.
In the end, Bing will sink or fall on the service it provides to users. If, as Microsoft claims, it is a better, more intuitive, and more relevant search engine than Google, people will transition to Bing over the years, just as they transitioned to Explorer from Netscape. Even if they had called it “bong” or “bung” or “bang.”
Microsoft has to deliver on the promise of Bing as a game-changer in the search sphere. If they don’t, then Bing = “Bing is not Google” will be everyone’s perception of the brand, not just a cute acrostic.
I do find it curious that TechCrunch can get all orgasmic over the mythically unimpressive and disappointing Wolfram/Alpha — which couldn’t answer any question I put to it except the most obvious (”president of the United States”) — yet be all-over-horse-piss about Bing, before we’ve seen what it can do. Doesn’t make sense.
I’m less concerned with the use of bing the disease as a search engine than I am with it being on a fortune cookie… what kind of fortune is that?
Would appear you’re just digging for negative news.
I suppose MSFT never looked up Bing or Binger on urban dictionary either. Never would I imagine associating a search (binger) with a bong toke or stimulation of the female genitals.
Friday humor is always welcome.
Alright guys, to make this thread even more funnier, some M$ guys start to wear t-shirts with ‘ubing’ on them.
And guess what, ubing sounds like ‘有病’ in Chinese, which means ‘u sick’ or ‘u nuts’
Ah Bing, the memories of childhood, I can’t it imagine it tasting as good as I remember it in liquid form: http://www.silv...c=AO&fnc=AX
MG Siegler,
that’s pretty unfair for Microsoft because Google Wave is not any better than Bing.
Wave in Chinese sound like 危(Danger)
危 pinyin is WEI.
Check the chinese pronunication here/
http://www.ncik...ail/危/1315787
http://www.joe....ring/image1.gif
Though it is less subtle because it could mean danger to Microsoft , or danger in use,
… LOL.
lol… funny stuff.
There goes the chinese market.
Bing is also slang for the culture/cheese that grows under one’s foreskin.
Not mine obviously, I shower regularly.
Perhaps the ‘Bing’ product folks should use a good search engine or better still a translation engine when thinking up product names. Might I suggest http://translate.google.com?
If you don’t think there is an issue with the name – then you really don’t care about making products for an international market.
Hey dude,
Do you even read any of the responses on these sites or do you just swallow verbatim the ideological propaganda and crap that some writers on these sites pump out? They simply wanted to write negative stuff about Microsoft again and really dug to the bottom of the barrel with this ’story’.
According to Dr. Qi Lu who thought about going back to live in his native China before accepting Steve Ballmer’s offer to head up Microsoft’s search effort, Bing means something a little more positive in Chinese:
“Bing” also resonates with an audience Google is yet to dominate: China.
“The actual Chinese characters are two characters, ‘Bi’ and ‘Ing’ and combined these two characters mean ‘very certain to respond’ and ‘very certain to answer’,” Dr Lu said.
“That’s a terrific representation of what our brand stands for in the Chinese language.”
I would hazard to say that a Chinese native actually heading up the Search business @ Microsoft knows something more about the name and it’s permutations in Chinese vs the arm chair quarerbacks at Techcrunch and others on here.
I think most of us would read the name from a western worldview and/or language. The translation from it’s (now we know) chinese origin to english probably isn’t “pretty” but its intended meaning (in chinese) is actually quite meaningful. In any case, it’s a short name, easy to remember, and what happens after this whole fuss about the name dies down, is probably more important, i.e. the quality of the product especially up against Google.
bing 有 bīng，bǐng，bìng 三种不同的读音， N 个各种意义的汉字。其它没想到，就想到这，我看你丫就一病态。
That’s frigging hilarious. Somebody on the brand selection/management team is definitely on the hot seat from this!
The Chinese guy “Dr. Lu” who is arguing “Bing” is a good name in Chinese will be out of a job when the white guys at HQ figure out he was wrong.
His argument is that by transliterating the sound “bing” into the two Chinese characters “bi ying” (pronounced bee-ing) the result is the meaning “very certain to respond”. While he may be right that this is “a terrific representation of what the brand stands for”, as a brand name it sucks.
There are two main reasons why it sucks:
First, the majority of Chinese people will tell you that “bi ying” simply doesn’t sound good as a brand name. I don’t think Dr. Lu did any focus groups with Chinese people. I think it’s the classic case of the white guys making a decision while ignorant of the implications and the Chinese guy trying to save their face with a half-baked “solution” that will end up hurting the company.
Second, “bing” is pin-yin for the character 病. Competitors like Google and Baidu can have a field day playing with “bing” (virus, etc.) to portray MS and its search engine in a negative light.
Remember Chevy Nova? Bing is the Nova of Microsoft.
Benedict, it is a great post thanks for posting it!
Stop yoyr damed BING, i dont like it! STOPP IT NOW!!!!!!!!!! I dont need it!!!!