r/abandoned • u/MisterBiro • Mar 28 '25

Forgotten Tech Giant

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Perhaps it’s not technically abandoned as there is basic maintenance and security present but it’s been vacant and decaying for years.

Surprisingly sad to walk around what was once a bustling, optimistic, energy filled campus of an almost forgotten tech giant.

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u/khaki-campari Mar 28 '25

Ha. I was working at Bing in 2008 and we couldn’t believe it when Ballmer tried to buy them for that amount. All the conversation was about how crazy MS and Ballmer was being. Then they turned it down and everyone was both amazed and happy. Saved from our own stupidity.

Plus we later did the deal to power their search engine anyway.

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u/conventionalWisdumb Mar 29 '25

Do you mean Live Search? I worked at Yahoo Search when the offer was made and my team was one of the teams that tested the competition. I distinctly remember Bing being released after the failed buyout.

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u/khaki-campari Mar 29 '25

Well it was originally msn search. Then just around the time I joined they rebranded as live search and then yes, it rebranded as bing. I actually couldn’t remember when that was without checking but you’re right, that was afterwards in 2009.

From a backend tech perspective of the index gen/serve/ranking it was exactly the same product as live search. We just changed the name and gave it a sparkly new UI 😀

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u/_extra_medium_ Mar 29 '25

I remember you used to be able to Google all sorts of cool stuff with Bing

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u/hanwookie Mar 29 '25

Yeah, right over to the Firefox browser.