The Road to Search

Just wondering where Bill Gates & Steve Ballmer get their names for stuff.

Once, long ago, we had Microsoft's Bob - a wonderful help for anyone who really shouldn't have been using a computer in the first place.
Now we have Microsoft's Bing - not just a search engine, mind you, but a decision engine - or so they hope.

And that's where my wondering started off.
I'm sure few of you remember the big band era, but Bob Crosby led the band Bob Crosby and the Bobcats - a pretty decent, fun band. He described himself as "the Crosby without Hope."
Sadly, if you don't remember the big band era, you probably don't remember those great Road pictures either (as in "The Road to Morocco," which had a great line in the title song which went, "like Webster's dictionary, we're Morocco-bound.").
At any rate, Bob was the Crosby without Hope, Bing was the Crosby with Hope (Bob Hope, but let's ignore that for now).

So ... my assumption, based on vast amounts of pure speculation and nothing much more, is that after Bob was declared hopeless and consigned to the same bin that now holds Clippy (we can only hope neither ever will escape!) the namers at Microsoft decided to bring out the one with Hope - hence Bing.

or not.