Bing Search on Gossip Girl

Microsoft is pushing its newly revamped search engine, Bing, quite hard these days. Almost a little too hard.

I’ve noticed on the last few episodes of Gossip Girl that the characters have been using Bing as their main search engine. At first it was subtle, just a screen insert shot here or there of a character using Bing, but in the last episode (season 3 episode 18 “The Unblairable Lightness of Being”) Blair Waldorf’s mother Eleanor exclaims in a bout of computer filled search frustration —”Just Bing it.”

Clearly this move by Bing is a direct jab at Google and an attempt to turn the word Bing into a verb as Google did by adding its name to the cultural lexicon.

Judging even by search stats for this site, Bing will have a long way to go as even watchers of Gossip Girl are a very media and advertising aware bunch. Such overt and blatant attempts at marketing via character borne product placement may not be the best approach, but we shall see in time.

Do you think Bing has what it takes to take down the Google Goliath?