Commentaries

I am thinking of rebranding myself as Zing

Eric Auchard

Jul 20, 2009 10:04 UTC

Some tech links to start the week:

I am seriously considering changing my byline to Zing, what with all the media attention a certain search engine is getting.

The New York Times looks at the ups and downs of turning brands into verbs. The jumping off point is Bing, Microsoft’s effort at verbal one-upsmanship over Google, Twitter and over generic daily activities. The software giant must alter deeply ingrained computer habits to succeed. In the meantime, my original questions about Bing remain.

The more substantial news this week would be if Microsoft finally inks a search and advertising partnership with Yahoo Inc. It’s not easy to overcome deal speculation fatigue — it’s been a year-and-a-half since Microsoft sought to acquire Yahoo outright, and a year since it dropped back to Plan B and sought out a more limited partnership deal. Boomtown reported Friday that Microsoft is down to a few short strokes away from signing.  Henry Blodget makes the point that Microsoft may have to pay up far more than the $1 billion it was offering a year back for such a deal.  Closing a deal now suggests renewed desperation on Microsoft’s part after the paltry gain it received from Bing in June market share statistics for U.S. web search.

Beyond the personalities and the history that have kept Yahoo and Microsoft apart, there is the little matter of an advertising recession  that will delay any short- or medium-term rebound in either company’s online advertising fortunes. AOL Chief Executive puts any resurgence in online advertising out to 2011 in an interview published by Reuters on Sunday.