But what is "Bing," anyway? vary from "a heap or pile" to "a blackish sweet cherry." Its Web site, though, has a slightly more colorful palette. Sure, bing.com is coming up mainly blank as of now -- but not too long ago, someone else had a thing for Bing.

The bing.com domain name was first registered in late January 1996, just . (Microsoft snagged its own dot-com identity in 1991.) In its early incarnation, the name Bing belonged to a Colorado company trying to sell a "personal notification device" it described as "the first practical solution to personal and discrete cell phone ring notification."

So what was this "practical" and "discrete" solution? It was evidently a small contraption that would vibrate remotely when your cell phone rang. "Bing allows a person to keep their cell phone in a pocket, purse, briefcase, heavy coat, in another room, or anywhere up to a few hundred feet away, and be notified of a cell phone call without attracting attention and without having to 'wear' a clunky phone on his or her hip," an early version of bing.com explained.

Hmm. Guess the introduction of the smaller cell phone with built-in vibrate mode kind of killed that idea.