I vaguely remember a number of lawsuits over the years of Microsoft vs “The Little Guy.” One that I distinctly remember was Microsoft vs. MikeRoweSoft. It was a legal dispute between Microsoft and a Canadian high school student named Mike Rowe over the domain name MikeRoweSoft.com. The case received international press attention following Microsoft’s perceived heavy-handed approach to a 12th grade student’s part time web design business and the subsequent support that Rowe received from the online community. A settlement was eventually reached, with Rowe granting ownership of the domain to Microsoft in exchange for training and gifts.

The MikeRoweSoft.com domain now forwards to a bing.com search page. Ironic, I think.

Fast-forward to 2009. Microsoft has a hot, new search decision engine: Bing.com. This is the first real change Microsoft has against search giant Google.com. While searching for a bing.com logo to use in a past blog post I made the mistake of typing “Bing” in Google’s Image Search. Not only did I not find any Bing.com logos, I was staring at a page saturated with hardcore pornography images… namely a pornstar named Carmella Bing. Although I have “safe search” turned off, I turned it back on and the results were still just Carmella.

I’m curious how long it takes Microsoft to notice this and make the pornstar change her “name ” or to work some SEO magic to get bing.com images back to the top.

Time will tell.

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Filed under: copywrong, micro$oft, ugh