

Microsoft launches Bing Booster program for startups that want to use Bing - flardinois
http://siliconfilter.com/bing-booster-microsoft-wants-to-bring-bing-to-more-startups/

======
mark_l_watson
I occasionally use the Bing search and spelling APIs (I wrote a Ruby example:
[http://markwatson.com/blog/2009/06/ruby-client-for-search-
an...](http://markwatson.com/blog/2009/06/ruby-client-for-search-and-
spelling.html)) but I would hesitate to build a business dependent on a 3rd
party set of APIs.

A long time ago, I relied on Google's public search API and when it was
cancelled I started using Bing, but nothing that I depend on.

------
syncopate
I second that the name "bing" is unfortunate. It sounds Chinese but the only
words pronounced bing in Chinese are things like "being sick", "sad", or
"nightmare"; it's not a good name.

------
frevd
All they really need to do is changing that awful name. BING.. i mean can u
choose a more obvious name indicating that you dont understand aesthetics and
are only off for the market share? Same for Windows fcking Vista. The only
reason I didnt even try it was that name. It's just too emberassing, has no
spirit at all and sounds like some scumbag from the marketingteam ridiculed
all the hopes of the developers. Longhorn used to be so much better. If they
care about it, all they have to do is to show a little more enthusiasm, or
simply fire their marketing advisors.

~~~
frevd
at least they learned from that experience with Vista and didnt chose a name
at all for Windows 7 (although they messed up the internal version number).

~~~
fname
They didn't mess up the internal version number. It was done for software
compatibility reasons.

 _Windows 2000 code was 5.0 and then we shipped Windows XP as 5.1, even though
it was a major release we didn't' want to change code version numbers to
maximize application compatibility.

That brings us to Windows Vista, which is 6.0. So we see Windows 7 as our next
logical significant release and 7th in the family of Windows releases.

We learned a lot about using 5.1 for XP and how that helped developers with
version checking for API compatibility. We also had the lesson reinforced when
we applied the version number in the Windows Vista code as Windows 6.0-- that
changing basic version numbers can cause application compatibility issues.

So we decided to ship the Windows 7 code as Windows 6.1 - which is what you
will see in the actual version of the product in cmd.exe or computer
properties._

[http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/archive/b/windowsvista/ar...](http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/archive/b/windowsvista/archive/2008/10/14/why-7.aspx)

