New logo for Microsoft Bing.
Microsoft has rebranded its Bing search engine and given it a new name: Microsoft Bing. Most of us will most likely continue to refer Microsoft’s search engine as “Bing”, but Microsoft would like us to now refer to their search engine as Microsoft Bing rather than just “Bing”. Get it? I’m as confused as you are.
Rebranding Bing
Rebranding the Bing search engine and adding “Microsoft” to their search engine could, in fact, be part of a longer term strategy to change the name. Certainly this is my own personal speculation, but what if the overall plan was to get rid of the Bing name at some point in the future? If that was the case, I’d probably do the following:
Bing => Microsoft Bing ==> Microsoft
If you’re rebranding and would like to get to the end goal, which is to bring back “Microsoft” to be more prominent (and get rid of “Bing”), then you wouldn’t necessarily just make the switch and remove Bing. You’d do it slowly, which is to move towards using Microsoft Bing in the name, and then it would be easier, later on, to remove Bing in the name. This is one possible scenario here. Personally, I like ‘shorter’ names, such as Bing, but if the plan is to remove Bing altogether and have a consistent brand across all of Microsoft’s services, then you might get rid of “Bing”.
Microsoft Announces the Change to Bing
Microsoft announced the change to the Bing name. “That’s why starting today, you will see a shift in product to Microsoft Bing, which reflects the continued integration of our search experiences across the Microsoft family.” Bing powers a lot more than just the Bing search engine that we’re used to using to search web pages on the internet.
At the same time, they also announced the addition of Giving with Bing, which has been integrated with Microsoft Rewards.
So what is the long term plan? To get rid of “Bing”? Perhaps. Maybe not. However, in any case, Bing is no longer Bing. It’s Microsoft Bing.