Bing is Rebranded to Microsoft Bing

Last month, I reported that Microsoft appeared to be rebranding Bing to Microsoft Bing. Today, the software giant confirmed this change.

“Starting today, you will see a shift in [the] product [from Bing] to Microsoft Bing, which reflects the continued integration of our search experiences across the Microsoft family,” Microsoft corporate vice president Jordi Ribas awkwardly writes in the announcement post. (Seriously, give Grammarly a shot, Microsoft. It works better than your in-house writing tools.) “We’re also excited to announce the expansion of Give with Bing, which helps you make a difference just by searching – no need to open your wallet!”

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As you may recall, many Bing users had been seeing a Microsoft logo replacing the (admittedly terrible) Bing logo on Bing.com, leading to speculation that a rebranding was underway. Today’s announcement confirms that news, and Microsoft is using its own logo for what’s now called Microsoft Bing as expected. But it is also using a new version of the “b” Bing logo—that’s less hard-edged and more in keeping with Microsoft’s other recent icon updates—as the site logo you see in the browser tab. It’s also branded the site as Microsoft Bing, instead of Bing.

As for the Give with Bing news noted in the quote above, Microsoft is partnering with celebrities and nonprofits, and it will match the points users donate to organizations through Give with Bing through December 31, 2020. To date, Give with Bing users have donated Microsoft Rewards points valued at over $1 million to nonprofit organizations, the firm says. It is also expanding Give with Bing to seven more markets beyond the United States: The UK, Canada, Australia, France, Italy, Germany, and Spain.

You can get started with Give with Bing here.

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Conversation 34 comments

  • ngc224

    05 October, 2020 - 1:50 pm

    <p>Is the Microsoft rebranding division represented on the senior leadership team?</p><p><br></p><p>Let’s hope they rebrand “Surface Duo.”</p>

    • winner

      05 October, 2020 - 3:50 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#583822">In reply to ngc224:</a></em></blockquote><p>They may have cut the QC on Windows and cut the security team so that the Rebranding Division would have the proper staffing of thousands to be able to fully analyze and then obfuscate what the future directions will be!</p>

    • jgraebner

      Premium Member
      05 October, 2020 - 6:22 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#583822">In reply to ngc224:</a></em></blockquote><p>They'd just rebrand it to "Microsoft Surface Duo Featuring Microsoft Bing".</p>

    • SvenJ

      05 October, 2020 - 6:58 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#583822"><em>In reply to ngc224:</em></a><em> </em>So, what's wrong with Surface Duo? The name, not the device.</blockquote><p><br></p>

  • hrlngrv

    Premium Member
    05 October, 2020 - 2:11 pm

    <p>Now there'll never be any doubt who's responsible for it.</p><p>As for MSFT's statement shorn of the bracketed additions, online Grammarly says NO ERRORS, so maybe the writers at thurrott.com should put more faith in Grammarly than their own, apparently incomplete grammatical abilities.</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      06 October, 2020 - 8:45 am

      We can only strive to have complete grammatical abilities.

  • Snooker

    05 October, 2020 - 3:15 pm

    <p>In my opinion, this would be similar to Ford rebranding the Pinto to 'Ford Pinto'. Why spend a bunch of money rebranding something like that instead of investing the money into making the product… well… better. "We changed the b in Bing to be less hard-edged". But the search results still aren't that great. My reluctance to use bing isn't how sharp the b in the logo is, or even how ugly it's logo is, it's the fact that I can consistently get better results from its competitors. </p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      06 October, 2020 - 8:42 am

      Random aside: Ford did rebrand the Taurus to the Ford 500. And then changed it back years later.

  • ebraiter

    05 October, 2020 - 3:19 pm

    <p>Big woopie. Or in a year or two it will be called "The Bing".</p><p>Bing is such a crappy search engine.</p>

  • rob_segal

    Premium Member
    05 October, 2020 - 3:28 pm

    <p>To capitalize on the success of TikTok and Pixar's Inside Out, Microsoft Bing will now be rebranded to BingBong.</p>

  • waethorn

    05 October, 2020 - 3:32 pm

    <p>Bing is still a terrible name. They should've just stuck with "Microsoft Search" which is already the Microsoft 365 search experience for the enterprise. Instead they have a thing called "Microsoft Search in Bing", which gives you enterprise results integrated into Bing. It would make more sense to just add web results to Microsoft Search, and amalgamate the whole thing on Azure.</p>

  • winner

    05 October, 2020 - 3:42 pm

    <p>Reminds me of an old joke.</p><p><br></p><p>The new CEO is handed three envelopes by the outgoing CEO. He's told that whenever a crisis occurs, open the next envelope.</p><p>At the first crisis the new CEO opens the first envelope. "Blame it on the old CEO", it says.</p><p>At the second crisis the new CEO opens the second envelope. "Reorganize", it says.</p><p>At the third crisis the new CEO opens the last envelope. "Prepare three envelopes", it says.</p><p><br></p><p>In this context, the rebranding of Bing is like the "Reorganize" item in the joke.</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      06 October, 2020 - 8:39 am

      🙂

  • proftheory

    Premium Member
    05 October, 2020 - 3:59 pm

    <p>Why didn't they rebrand it to Microsoft Search?</p>

  • wbhite

    Premium Member
    05 October, 2020 - 4:10 pm

    <p>You know what one of MS's biggest problems is? They feel the need to constantly change things, be it branding, functionality, etc. How do they expect people to get accustomed to a property, service, or device if it's going to be different (or non-existent) in a few (sometimes a couple) of years? Just make a decision, stick to it, and ride it out.</p>

  • glenn8878

    05 October, 2020 - 4:31 pm

    <p>That makes it so much better! Not really. </p>

  • jupast

    05 October, 2020 - 4:55 pm

    <p>Well that seems…utterly pointless. It's the Bing brand that has the not so great reputation (deserved or otherwise) with the general public. </p><p><br></p><p>This is like painting flames on a Pinto and thinking yeah, now it's cool and more betterer. Because…flames.</p>

    • lee_mcknight

      05 October, 2020 - 5:38 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#583853">In reply to jupast:</a></em></blockquote><p>Microsoft Windows Live MSN Search powered by Bing</p>

  • sammyg

    05 October, 2020 - 5:16 pm

    <p>In other news YouTube was renamed to Google YouTube for change sake and slow tech news days.</p><p><br></p><p>Honestly if you would have told me that Bing was actually called Microsoft Bing I would have thought…"Ok I guess that is important?".</p>

  • bleeman

    Premium Member
    05 October, 2020 - 5:32 pm

    <p>I agree with the comments stating their constant rebranding is ridiculous. I feel the same way with all the icon changes, etc. To me it's a waste of resources that should be used to clean up the issues with their products. One of my biggest pet peeves is the lousy Bluetooth support in Windows. I've never had so much trouble maintaining connections as I've had since Windows 10 came out. To make matters worse my problems are with Microsoft Surface accessories and the Microsoft Surface Pro and Studio 2. If I use my Surface accessories with other products they work as expected. But put Windows 10 in the loop and nothing but connectivity issues. I usually get 3 to 4 alerts or more an hour that Your Phone has lost connectivity with my phone.</p><p><br></p><p>As for the comments regarding Bing, not sure why so many people think its so bad. I've been using it for years and periodically compare it to the other search engines and I've only found it not up to the task a few times. I also enjoy the benefit of the Microsoft reward points that I get from using it as my search engine. I use it enough that I've been enjoying a free Microsoft Ultimate Game Pass as I regularly rack up the 35,000 points needed for the 3 month pass.</p>

    • red.radar

      Premium Member
      06 October, 2020 - 9:05 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#583857">In reply to bleeman:</a></em></blockquote><p>The resources used to brand something are not the same or capable to actually improve the product. Microsoft has a small army’s worth of Product line managers and project managers that have to provide value doing something…. these people are not going to be remotely capable of doing one ounce of coding. </p><p><br></p><p>Now to counter my point and align with your sentiment. These people should be able to do the research to gather the insights to meaningfully improve the product. However … I bet it’s a case of a mature product …. search is search it hasn’t changed in 10 years since the advent of autocomplete. The resources are being poured into AI not web crawling and indexing. </p>

  • SvenJ

    05 October, 2020 - 6:53 pm

    <p>Well, now that I know it is Microsoft Bing, I may give it a go. Wasn't sure about that off-brand browser up to now.</p>

  • Tiny

    Premium Member
    05 October, 2020 - 6:54 pm

    <p>Yawn. I would have probably never noticed until I read about it.</p>

  • codymesh

    05 October, 2020 - 7:55 pm

    <p>uhhhh?</p>

  • ragingthunder

    05 October, 2020 - 9:08 pm

    <p>Thurrott has been renamed to Paul Thurrott.</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      06 October, 2020 - 8:27 am

      Paul B Thurrott 🙂 For the business plan!

  • jfgordon

    06 October, 2020 - 4:29 am

    <p>Let me write a very naive comment: Wouldn't it be a better world if all big companies did what they are good at, and cooperated with each other? Google does search and web-apps, Microsoft does office and BI suites, Facebook does social, Apple does devices… Why do they have to waste resources trying to steal each other's lunch? All this "be the company that does all" is very Nineties imho.</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      06 October, 2020 - 8:25 am

      Yep. That would be better.

      This was sort of the idea with Google and Apple partnering on the original iPhone. Google wouldn’t make phones and Apple wouldn’t make a search engine. etc.

    • jgraebner

      Premium Member
      06 October, 2020 - 3:20 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#583964">In reply to jfgordon:</a></em></blockquote><p>While that makes sense on one hand, it also would largely eliminate competition and, thus, likely drive up prices significantly. That would also create a high probability of running afoul of antitrust laws.</p>

  • dallasnorth40

    Premium Member
    06 October, 2020 - 9:04 am

    <p>I see no material difference between Google search and Microsoft Bing. So, I use Bing and get the pretty pictures as a bonus.</p><p>Nice!</p>

  • red.radar

    Premium Member
    06 October, 2020 - 9:11 am

    <p>I think the next step is for Bing to become a place to search for knowledge and not a place where you search to buy junk. One thing that frustrates me about search engines today is if you type in something that is remotely close to a consumer product all the SEO trolls have pushed the crap results up to the top so you can buy their junk. </p><p><br></p><p>Its like trying to find information while driving down an interstate looking up at bill boards. </p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p>

  • bbold

    09 October, 2020 - 12:46 am

    <p>I just don't care for the name 'Bing.' Never have. Who thinks this stuff up? What does 'Bing' mean, anyway? Is Bing a state of mind? Isn't Bing Chandler's last name? Is Bing an expansion of consciousness or a name for a pet rat? Is Bing a potato? Well, the world may never know.</p><p><br></p><p>…Bing!!</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      09 October, 2020 - 8:43 am

      I can’t defend the name. But the thinking was that it had to be short (for both URL and saying it), memorable, and available as a brand. Those are very limiting conditions.

  • Andy Talbot

    13 October, 2020 - 9:59 am

    <p>BING = 'Because It's Not Google'? Just a crazy theory of mine!</p>

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