06 Jun 09 Finally, another ‘verb’ search engine

As you probably haven’t already heard, Microsoft announced a new product this week called ‘Bing‘ (www.bing.com) to compete with other services like Google search and Yahoo search. They’re not calling it a “search engine” per-se, they’re calling it a “decision engine”. While the concept seems like it’s on the right track, time will tell if it catches on with mainstream use.

On to my point though….

Everyone’s used the term “I’ll Google it” at some point in their lives but you rarely hear someone claim “I’ll Yahoo it” or “I’ll Live Search it.” I’ve always wondered why none of Google’s competitors ever caught on to the fact that the names of their search engines were all nouns and not verbs. Now-I’m not saying that Google’s insane level of success in dominating the search market is due to the fact that their name can be used as a verb. I’m sure it has something to do with the fact that it doesn’t suck as badly as Yahoo and Live Search do.

Saying “I’ll Bing it” doesn’t seem to have the same catchy flow as saying “I’ll Google it” has. Chew on these examples and see if you agree:

I’m interviewing a potential employee and want to do some due-diligence: “I’ll Google Him” or “I’ll Bing Him” ….a little creepy sounding right?

“I know everything about horses, I Bing’d them”