I will freely admit that I’m a bit of a stickler when it comes to the English language. I like commas in the right places. I enjoy a nicely placed full stop. As for the overuse of the exclamation mark!!! So, when it comes to adding new, made-up words to the dictionary, I get a little ranty. (Of course, made-up words of my own, like ‘ranty’, are totally okay.) Which is why it’s taken me so very long to accept that ‘Google’ really is an acceptable verb… But now Bill Gates want me to ditch Google, the word and the engine, and start telling everyone I’m into “Binging”. Which totally sounds as if I’ve fro-ed my hair, am draped in bling and think I’m banging, biatches, but is actually just what computer giants Microsoft want to be the new Google.

Say hello to Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine officially launching to the public this week. A search engine that some people in the know actually think it has what it takes to Bing Google out the park.

Apparently Bing, the rebranded and rebuilt search engine formerly code-named Kumo designed to replace the very boring Live Search, which replaced the even more boring MSN Search, already beats Google in some areas. Like the fact that Bing will pop up an excerpt of the text on a search result if you hover over it, saving you time if you’re not quite sure if you want to follow a result. And if you’re prone to shopping online, Bing will offer you a ‘cashback program’ on items searched for, and found, through them. The most noticeable, and zingy – or bingy (my new word – has such a nice bingy ring to it) – new feature on Bing though is a table of contents, a navigation rail that allows you to refine your search and that changes with each query. For example, if you search for, say, Honda Civic cars, Bing will suggest you refine your search to ‘Used’, but in one for Hyundai, it suggests ‘problems’, because these are the most frequently used searches for these cars, something Bing immediately recognises.

Techie stuff aside, there’s also the fact that Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder, thinks that Bing is “One of the most astounding software demos I’ve ever seen.” He reckons he’s a huge fan, well, for now. So far Bing is receiving pretty good reviews from a bunch of other clever tech types too (I Googled Bing to find them, which is pretty ironic), so we’re definitely going to give it a shot. Can’t say we’re ever totally going to give up on Google though, especially ‘coz Google never gives up doing new, bingy stuff too. Like it’s new Gmail ‘Inbox Preview’ – load this up and Gmail will show you a plaintext version of your 10 most recent message subject lines goes as it’s going through its initial boot. You can’t open the messages or interact with them in any way, but it will let you quickly tell if you’ve got any new messages without having to sit through the load time. It’s a really basic tool, but totally binging if you’re one of the unlucky ones who often has to use quirky connections. To enable the feature, head to the Labs section of your Gmail account and look for “Inbox Preview”. Frankly, sometimes Google is totally psychic when it comes to knowing what we want to see and do.

Anyway, back to the battle of the verbs, while ‘to Google’ was officially added to the Oxford English Dictionary back in 2006, Bing will have to wait and see if it’s name – “meant to conjure the sound of found” as the Microsoft peeps put it – gets verbed. In the meantime though, some loyal Google-ites think it’s quite funny that Bing is also an acronym for ‘But It’s Not Google’.

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