Microsoft announced today a new search initiative (and yet another brand identity) for their struggling game against Google, and unfortunately, it’s not exactly the best name. Microsoft has used too many different brandings for its search initiatives within the past decade (unlike Google and Yahoo who, well, used the same name all throughout), and besides creating confusion for people, all it does is make it harder to create those mental associations Microsoft is looking for.

Once all is said and done, Bing is a search engine which aims to present more relevant information. Since this is the perpetual, never-ending goal of search engines, I can’t actually say that Bing is something new, nor can I agree with the “decision engine” marketing term because, in the end, all search engines exist to help us make decisions. Hopefully, Bing can provide better results than Google, but that completely depends on how much time and effort Microsoft invests into Bing. Given that search was the future, Microsoft might’ve been better off finding a new disruptive technology as opposed to fighting an established goliath.

Back to the name:

Long ago, Yahoo tried to get their name woven into the fabric of public literacy. Yahoo wasn’t successful for the same reason Bing won’t be successful either: they’re both ever so slightly too hard to pronounce as a verb. Here’s a good rundown of worked and what didn’t:

• Yahoo has two syllables with weak starting consonants, of which one is the confused letter Y.  It also ends in an audible vowel which, when paired with the next word in the sentence, makes pronunciation harder. Since the next word after the term would likely have been “it,” saying “yahoo it” doesn’t properly roll off the tongue.
• Kumo (the old name for Bing) doesn’t work because it ends on a vowel and has one soft consonant in the middle, deflating the word itself. The word “Kumo” makes the person saying it feel like he’s losing enthusiasm as a result of not holding some degree of assertion through the name.
• Cuil sure as hell didn’t work because no one knew how the hell to pronounce it. (It’s pronounced “cool,” unlike the name)
• Google works because both syllables start with a solid consonant, and the word itself ends in a silent (and therefore irrelevant) vowel. Larry and Sergey got lucky with the name; they were just making a play on Googol, but the end result is the same. The name itself implies an assertive action through the use of hard consonants but succeeds in avoiding aggression because it ends in a soft consonant. The consonant ending also allows the word to easily be appended to other words during pronunciation, especially the word “it.”

Bing is a different case altogether. It’s a monosyllabic word (like Cuil, but it doesn’t look as intimidating), which means the rules change a bit. One-syllable words have the advantage of being quick to pronounce and easy to remember, which also means that the word is best starting and ending with a rather solid consonant (Digg is a good example), but there are too few permutations of letters for any cool monosyllabic words starting with a good, solid consonant to be unused in this world of Web 2.LetsNameOurWebsiteAnything. The problem is that Bing actually sounds cool and usable. Unfortunately, Bing has two drawbacks which set what would otherwise be a rather successful name up for failure:

• It sounds too much like “ping.” While this won’t be a problem for lay-users who don’t know what an ICMP Echo is, it will be a problem for the more advanced users who will inevitably struggle to differentiate the pronunciation of “bing” from “ping.” The problem is that when the advanced users have to put too much effort into saying something, they will subconsciously lose motivation to spread the word, which limits the spread of the brand. This would be the biggest drawback of all since Bing is yet another tech service looking for appeal.
• It just feels analogous to ‘hit,’ ‘bang,’ ‘tap,’ and any other term which falls into that category of slang.

There aren’t really any words left with four letters ending in “ing” that haven’t been taken already, and Bing actually sounds better than what’s left. The best goal for any name is to be easy to pronounce in context while serving as a subconscious motivator to do the act to which the name is tied, which is why Google worked, and which is the only way any other name can work.

Honestly, I wish Bing the best of luck. The world knows how badly Google now needs a competitor in the search space. It’s just that Microsoft’s resources might’ve been better spent on disruption rather than throwing blunted stones at a shielded Goliath. If you want to read a full rundown of the service itself, drop by the WinSuperSite and have at it.