VentureBeat

Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine — whoops, they’re now called discovery engines — has served some sweet-looking pages to a few lucky people since Steve Ballmer’s henchmen threw the big switch yesterday. But most of us have only seen blank pages or the “Coming Soon” page above.

Our readers took a few screenshots. Search Engine Land was able to do head-to-head tests of Bing versus Google. Mike Arrington reported from the Google I/O nerdapalooza in San Francisco that Bing already stands for “But it’s not Google.”

For Twitter, this sort of problem would be funny. For Microsoft, it only adds to the company’s they-don’t-get-it brand reputation. But if you’re looking for the money, Twitter is a cultural phenomenon hoping to become a business. Bing is a product from a successful business that hopes it will become a cultural phenomenon. They’re serious enough that they’ve dropped the Microsoft name and its years of baggage.

Microsoft isn’t likely to unseat Google as the king of search. But they don’t need to be Number One to make lots of money from Bing. I’m sticking to my story: This week’s launch bugs are entertaining, but irrelevant. Microsoft will let the bloggers shake out Bing’s bugs. Only then will the massive marketing campaign begin.

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Tags: Bing, co:google, co:microsoft