A weekend story about another Bing
Just to warn you, this story is not useful at all. It's just a fun and probably lesser known story about Bing to lighten our moods and prepare us for the weekend.
Back in 2009, Microsoft released their search engine, Bing. In the year before they had started preparations by acquiring national domain names for the search engine around the world.
That went well until they came to Norway. Bing .no was taken.
Oh, well, no big deal, Microsoft thought and started to approach the owner.
The owner was Jon Bing. His last name was Bing. And he was not just an ordinary guy. Here is who he was:
Jon Bing had his own law firm named Bing & Co.
He was part of The Protection of Privacy Committee and he was also a law professor at the Norwegian Research Center for Computers and Law (NRCCL), plus a law professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Oslo.
In addition, he held honorary doctorates from the University of Stockholm, the University of Copenhagen and he was a Visiting Professor at Kings College, University of London.
And he had also been the head of Council of Europe Committee on Legal Data Processing.
Jon Bing was considered a pioneer in international IT and information law.
In the late nineties, I had the pleasure of meeting and talking with Jon Bing a few times. Once at a dinner and once at a closed seminar about online copyright. He was packed with knowledge and crazy funny. I will remember those meetings forever.
Jon Bing died in 2014 but I managed to see him again shortly before his death when he lectured a packed auditorium at the University of Oslo about internet law.
Jon Bing was also a writer of science fiction novels. He wrote more than 30 of them, and he could often be seen at ShadowCon, a yearly Norwegian Sci-Fi festival.
So Microsoft found the right guy to try to buy bing .no from.
Nobody really knows how the deal went down. Jon Bing sold his domain to Microsoft, but he never wanted to tell anybody how much he got.
Recent Comments
50
What a wonderful and interesting story! I'll bet there was a lot of debate that went on and I'm sure Microsoft paid dearly. Thanks for sharing!
Nobody really found out until after the Bing launch. He was then interviewed but would not comment on the deal.
What a great story. I bet he was paid a lot. Thanks for sharing.
With Grace and Gratitude
Karen
Very interesting story to share with your friends around the fire.... I enjoyed it very much thank you. Jon Bing looks like an interesting person on the image you shared.
Regards
Piet
We can't always talk business - we need campfire stories as well. His appearance just emphasized him as a person :)
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Hi Jorn,
Thanks for sharing this interesting information.
Jon Bing sounded like a clever & interesting person.
Nice that you got to meet him.
Cheers, Jae
I will never forget that meeting :)
Thanks for reading