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Here’s Why Microsoft MUST Rebrand as BING Now
Wall Street Cheat Sheet ^ | 03/10/2011 | Damien Hoffman

Posted on 03/10/2011 6:29:30 AM PST by SeekAndFind

Face it, Bill Gates: Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) brand tells consumers the underlying product is buggy, susceptible to viruses and hackers, and often crashes.

For that incredibly important reason, Steve Balmer et al MUST rebrand Microsoft as Bing now.

Bing has a Slick Brand Conveying Quality and Great User Experience

According to comScore (NASDAQ:SCOR), Bing has done an awesome job taking search market share from Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO), Interactive Corp (NASDAQ:IACI) and AOL (NYSE:AOL). The young search engine already has 13.1% — only a few percentage points behind Yahoo’s 16.1%.

The bottom line is users like Bing’s slick user interface and higher quality search results. Results are so good, even search king Google (65.6% market share) is undergoing a major overhaul of their algorithm to banish spammers and low quality sites to search Hades. When the dominant company in any business makes significant changes to react to a much smaller competitor, the insurgent is doing something very right.

Bing Eliminates Baggage Associated with Microsoft Brand Microsoft has painstakingly spent mega-millions trying to salvage their brand after being completely mismanaged. Why fight the current?

Microsoft should immediately reallocate all that money toward a new campaign to rebrand all products excluding Windows (sorry, you simply can’t save something that is still a piece of crap).

If management was super smart, they would start by repackaging Windows 7 mobile operating system as Bing OS. Slick, beautiful, and high quality. Honestly, this is one of the few ways Microsoft can quickly make up for millions of miles of lost ground to Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone, Google’s Android, and even Research in Motion’s (NASDAQ:RIMM) also-ran OS for Blackberry.

I haven’t forgotten about Microsoft’s other hugely successful branding campaign: Xbox. However, I don’t think the Xbox brand has as much potential to cover a wide product base simply because the brand has a much longer history associated with video games. But a Bing OS opens the door for an awesome tie-in with the Xbox brand for generating much more revenue from the white hot mobile gaming space.

Bing Now Alright. There’s my “If I were CEO of Microsoft” rant for the day. If anyone over there wants some more consulting, email me. Need my contact info? Bing it.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: bing; microsoft; rebranding
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1 posted on 03/10/2011 6:29:38 AM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

In all fairness Google has done an awesome job of sending market share to Bing.


2 posted on 03/10/2011 6:32:55 AM PST by cripplecreek (Remember the River Raisin! (look it up))
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To: SeekAndFind

Interesting. I thought Google’s troubles started when they worked with the China Govt for censorship. They compounded those troubles by playing tattle tale with users who searched for flu symptoms whom they turned in to the CDC. I do not trust Google or their Android product, who knows what they have done we are unaware of. They are too comfy cozy with Big Brother. Microsoft as Bing will not address the underlying problems, it just renames them.


3 posted on 03/10/2011 6:34:47 AM PST by momincombatboots (In a few months I will be Ore..Gone! Look out Crater Lake, here we come!)
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To: SeekAndFind

Bing’s okay— needs to work on its search algorithm some


4 posted on 03/10/2011 6:40:10 AM PST by therightliveswithus
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To: SeekAndFind

“Microsoft should immediately reallocate all that money toward a new campaign to rebrand all products excluding Windows (sorry, you simply can’t save something that is still a piece of crap). “

Reading this is like reading Rachael Maddow report on the Tea Party.

You just have to feel sorry for idiots that actually defraud a company into paying them for this.


5 posted on 03/10/2011 6:41:07 AM PST by VanDeKoik (1 million in stimulus dollars paid for this tagline!)
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To: SeekAndFind

I never put quite this much thought into search engines.


6 posted on 03/10/2011 6:41:32 AM PST by Celtic Cross (Some minds are like cement; thoroughly mixed up and permanently set...)
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To: SeekAndFind

Wow. I didn’t even know AskJeeves was still around.


7 posted on 03/10/2011 6:41:32 AM PST by Richard Kimball
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To: cripplecreek

BING (because it’s not google) is the best. I love it. Better formatting and I love their mapping ap.


8 posted on 03/10/2011 6:42:27 AM PST by Marty62 (Marty 60)
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To: ShadowAce; Swordmaker

You guys might find this interesting. Ping-worthy? .... I dunno, maybe.


9 posted on 03/10/2011 6:43:23 AM PST by dayglored (Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!)
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To: SeekAndFind

LOL

yea... drop a worldwide brand name for ‘bing’. ROTFLMAO

you’d have to be a special kind of stupid to fall for that

this is just the wannabees trying to cut microsofts advantage at any turn


10 posted on 03/10/2011 6:45:05 AM PST by sten (fighting tyranny never goes out of style)
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To: SeekAndFind
As a Microsoft customer for over 30 years, I must say that the troubles they are in can't be changed simply by re-branding.

However, it can't hurt -- they're in so much trouble, almost anything is going to be an improvement.

11 posted on 03/10/2011 6:45:12 AM PST by dayglored (Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!)
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To: SeekAndFind

Is Windows still really that bad? Just keeping everything patched and using their zero-cost anti-virus tool will keep most people safe.


12 posted on 03/10/2011 6:45:34 AM PST by pnh102 (Regarding liberalism, always attribute to malice what you think can be explained by stupidity. - Me)
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To: dayglored
Thanks for the ping. Just saw this while getting ready for class.

I can't ping the list this week as I am in class for my Red Hat certs. I'll be back and available on Saturday.

13 posted on 03/10/2011 6:46:45 AM PST by ShadowAce (Linux -- The Ultimate Windows Service Pack)
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To: Marty62

If only they could come up with a firefox searchbar.


14 posted on 03/10/2011 6:47:27 AM PST by cripplecreek (Remember the River Raisin! (look it up))
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To: SeekAndFind

Bing needs a lot of work.

It’s the default search engine on my computer, but I rarely get what I’m looking for. Always need Google or another secondary search engine to find what I’m looking for.

I must say, it has gotten somewhat better than when it first debuted and I never found what I’m looking for. It went from a 0% success rate up to about 25%.


15 posted on 03/10/2011 6:49:59 AM PST by Hoodlum91 (There's a strange odor coming from the White House. Smells like BO.)
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To: SeekAndFind

MSFT has fallen into the same trap that has doomed many companies before it. I call them Biztards; managers who have no clue as to what the technology they deal with, sell and develop; actually works.

These biztards cut projects they do not understand, hire ‘Yes-men’ to bolster their self-esteem; and lay off skilled engineers for a better quarterly bonus.

Has MSFT really ever innovated? One could debate that they simply rip-off other people’s ideas and make a cheaper clone of a proven design. After all, Windows was a cheap rip-off the MacIntosh OS look and feel. Without Apple there to show them how things should workd - we would in all likelihood STILL be using DOS.

iPod —— Zune
iPhone —— Win7 mobile
iPad —— Win7 Home on tablet

Apple’s OS X - Windows 7
Intel/Apple’s Thunderbolt (Light Peak) port —— nothing yet

Back when Bill Gates was at the helm, we had Sr. Managment of Geeks and MSFT took over the world. They decimated the Office suite market by making the tools inter-operable.

Since then, instead of limiting themselves to only supporting certain configurations; MSFT opted to support literally thousands of possible motherboard configurations. When you make thousands of combinations of motherboards - you dillute the difference between “Compliant” and “Compatible” - and this makes vulnerabilities in your OS. Vulnerabilities not only in hardware compatibility, but in security and stability.

I do not believe that MSFT can sustain what they have created. I mean, as we add technology and patch past mistakes - we make a cleaner and better OS. WinXP dominated for 10 years. Vista lasted 3 yrs and was a disaster (remember WinME?), Win7 was really nothing more than a patched Vista OS - yet was sold as a new OS. Now, it sounds like we may see Win8 this summer/fall.

Why the desperate churn? Why the re-use of antiquated technologies (why do we resort to the Hard Drive to cache files - when we have more RAM than we know what to do with - and it’s over 1,000x faster to hit that?).

Engineers know this, engineers understand this. Biztards simply stare at the white-board with a glazed look in their eyes; and say “Let’s use the Hard Drive, it’s proven”. So was the buggy whip.


16 posted on 03/10/2011 6:58:44 AM PST by Hodar (Who needs laws .... when this "feels" so right?)
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To: momincombatboots

Agree. Bing is becoming more popular because Google is driving people away. Microsoft needs to get rid of Balmer. Aside from looking like Peter Boyle singing “Puttin’ on the Ritz” when he does a presentation, it’s obvious the company is out of ideas and copies Apple and Google without any thought. Their biggest success recently is the Kinect, and that’s probably because they didn’t try to copy Apple or Google.
They need to look at what the XBox and BING divisions are doing, and try to transplant that attitude throughout the organization.
BTW, If Apple wasn’t a choice, I’d go to MS before Android. Like you, I just don’t trust Google.


17 posted on 03/10/2011 6:59:35 AM PST by Richard Kimball
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To: Hoodlum91

My gripe with Google is that they do not have a good ‘date’ search feature.

Many times, I want to search for an item with a date between X and Y, or an item before Z.

Some other search engines allow that kind of search; although, the results are not always valid.

Google only allows advanced date searches within the last year forward.


18 posted on 03/10/2011 7:06:38 AM PST by TomGuy
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To: Hodar

“After all, Windows was a cheap rip-off the MacIntosh OS look and feel. Without Apple there to show them how things should work.”


So you don’t know who Apple ripped off, I take it?

The GUI, the mouse, everything?


19 posted on 03/10/2011 7:13:32 AM PST by chaosagent (Remember, no matter how you slice it, forbidden fruit still tastes the sweetest!)
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To: therightliveswithus

My What?

20 posted on 03/10/2011 7:28:20 AM PST by xp38
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