Ever wondered, who or what is Microsoft’s Bing Search Engine named after? Here is the story behind the Bing name!
“It all started with a fax to Mich Mathews, our SVP of Marketing. I’ll admit it was a little strange – it came from a man named Dr. Richard Bing who said he was 99 years old and would love to do something with us since we “used his name for our new search engine”. Mich routed it around to Carver and I and we both said, “huh, this is interesting.”
Within days we were on a plane heading down to LA to go visit Dr. Bing and see exactly what he was all about.
Dr. Richard Bing was born in Germany on Oct 12, 1909. In Germany, he went on to get a degree in music and composed a couple hundred pieces of classical music, some of which is still played today.
He then decided maybe he’d try medicine and got his M.D. Then at the urging of Charles Lindbergh he came to America to work on pioneering medical procedures.
We wanted to let other people meet Dr. Bing and maybe find a sliver of inspiration to do more. We’ve spent the last few weeks interviewing him on camera to get some of his little secrets of life. You’ve got to think about what he’s seen: two world wars, a great depression, jet travel, space travel, the internet, the integrated circuit, the globalization of the world, over five decades of marriage – there has to be some magic in there for everyone. We’re still shooting but we hope to have something in the can that everyone around the world can see by November.
Happy 100th birthday, Dr. Bing. And at least for today, go ahead and tell everyone we named the engine after you.”
- Stefan Weitz – Director, Bing.
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