In the nerdosphere today Microsoft announced a new search engine, dubbed “Bing” to be launched next week. In China bing.com is redirecting to cn.bing.com – leaving many (nerds) guessing what the Middle Kingdom will get in terms of a search engine.
In Chinese, Bing could mean a number of things depending on which tone you say it in or what context:
病 bìng – disease, sick
兵 bīng – soldier/military
冰 bīng – ice/cold
饼 bǐng – cake
并 bìng – bring together/merge
I’m not sure how the masses will take to it but a Chinese n00b like myself most commonly uses bing like “Wo bìng le” – I am sick…
Anyway, it seems to have taken someone by surprise judging by this screenshot taken today:
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2 Comments
I thought of the ice thing first, but they should really clear that up.
The whole bing thing took me by surprise- where was the months of buildup to it?
I use both Bing and Google search engine and i dont see much difference in their search results. I use google for searching hard to find academic topics and Bing for general search.
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