#1076 Bing Things

It’s funny how new things take hold so quickly and become the norm from which we all draw comparisons. Like the 3-R’s. It’s a fairly new idea. Reduce-Reuse-Recycle, some marketer’s creation that summed up the actions we all might take to save the planet.
Reduce what we put into the waste stream by steering clear of over-packaging. Reuse the stuff we have already, like empty water bottles made of over-packaging that we can fill back up at the water faucet, and Recycle that plastic container in the recycle bin to be ground up to make another one.
I had a friend the other day point out another ‘R’ that we’ve been neglecting. We were at an event and she pointed out that a gift that someone had just gotten was a gift she had seen before.
“Oh,” she said, “That’s the 4th ‘R’. Re-gifting.” The cool thing was, I and the people around her got it instantly. The 3-Rs are already so embedded in our culture that they’re a humorous reference.
Then I said, “...and I’m going to take advantage of the fifth ‘R’” and went to the tap to Refill my beer.
By the way, I wanted to be sure I had the 3-R’s right so I Googled them. Instant recognition there too. And another example of something we didn’t have 20 years ago that’s commonplace today.
Like we say we Xerox something when we make a copy, and like we call most brown colas Coke, Google has transformed into the preferred verb and synonym for “search”.
So much so that another friend the other day was telling me about the new search engine “Bing,” and when I said, “What’s Bing?” he said, “It’s Microsoft’s Google.”
Now that’s product saturation. When even the great Microsoft takes a second seat in the comparison game. But my favorite ironic thing was when my friend stumbled about how I could access Bing’s website and find out about it, I said, “That’s okay, I’ll just Google it.”
And I did. I got to Bing through Google. So now I can Google Bing or Bing Google.
I’m worried though. Google, Bing, Twitter, Tweet. Why does our greatest technology sound like baby talk?
America, ya gotta love it.