I heard a commercial on [Pandora](http://pandora.com) last night that made me do a double take. I’ll paraphrase:
>Use [Bing](http://www.bing.com) to find new music and discover songs on the internet. Bing allows you to connect with and follow the artists you love and learn more about them. Then search Bing for upcoming concerts and events near you and buy tickets instantly.
Every time I heard “Bing” I thought, oops, you can easily mishear (or replace it with): [Ping](http://www.apple.com/itunes/ping/).
Of course, Bing is Microsoft’s search-engine-do-everything answer to Google. And Ping is Apple’s social-networking-sell-music answer to Last.fm. Let’s look at the copy on Ping’s page:
>Follow your favorite artists with a click and become part of their inner circle … Find out what music other fans are listening to lately … See when artists are playing near you and see who else will be in the audience, too. Then click to buy tickets from Live Nation.
Perhaps Microsoft’s Bing is getting itself into the business of brand confusion. Maybe they’re trying to piggy back on the instant popularity of Apple’s Ping. Or perhaps it’s just a coincidence. Either way, I found it curious…
Or maybe it’s that Apple’s marketing is so good people now assume Microsoft is tyring to piggy back on Apple instead of Apple using a name that sounds a lot like Microsoft’s already existing search engine.
Actually, Bing existed long before Ping. Here, read this article and be enlightened: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/09/ping-bing-apple-music.html
Excellent article, thanks for sharing. While it’s obvious Bing has been around for years now, my thinking was perhaps it’s more than coincidence the music-themed ads on Pandora tout similar features of Ping.