Perhaps nothing better illustrates how far behind
Microsoft is in the search engine wars than a recent comment by the
company’s chief executive, Steve Ballmer, about why he liked the name
Bing for Microsoft’s new competitor to Google.The name, he told The New York Times, “works globally” and has the
potential “to verb up.” That is, some day, Mr. Ballmer hopes, people
will “bing” a new restaurant to find its address or “bing” a new job
applicant for telling events in his past.
Notes the Times:
The leader among Internet brands turned verbs, of
course, is Google. Imagine the glee in Microsoft headquarters if Google
lost its trademark protection to genericide. If “google” becomes
synonymous with conducting an Internet search, then Microsoft could
legally and confusingly advertise by saying: “Use Bing for all of your
most complicated googling!”
On the other hand, when your brand becomes a verb, you know you’ve
reached mass market consumer recognition, usually a pretty good
indicator for value creation. So far the internet brands that I can
think of that are commonly used as verbs are Google, Skype, Facebook,
Yelp and Twitter (tweet). What am I forgetting?
(For more from Jeremy, visit his blog)
(Image source:q30design.com)