SEX, BOMBS & BURGERS

Just how much does Microsoft depend on porn to fuel its business? Enough to buy ads with its sworn enemy, according to bloggers.

Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch made an interesting discovery two days ago. He typed the word "pornography" into Google and found that an ad for Microsoft's Bing search engine came up as the top result in the sponsored links column. This means that Microsoft has bought the keyword "pornography" from Google. Interesting, no?

Bing, as Arrington points out, has a pretty good video search feature - "it may be the best porn search engine ever created" - which could explain why the ad was there. Microsoft, however, denied buying the keyword:

Microsoft has not purchased the keyword 'pornography,' and this term has never been in our AdWords account. It is our policy on the Bing marketing team that we do not have any adult content as part of any of our keyword buys or other marketing campaigns. The keyword that seems to be triggering these results is 'free videos.' We are following up with Google to understand why this ad is showing up in these types of queries.

The whole issue got the folks over at CNET suspicious. Chris Matyszczyk, who writes the Technically Incorrect blog, wonders why Microsoft would buy the word "pornography" but not the much-easier-to-type "porn." He says: "Is the suggestion that only those of a elevated snootiness, those who refer to pornography by its full name, get the Bing ad?"

That discrepancy seems to give weight to Microsoft's denial, but Matyszczyk is right when he sarcastically says the company would never seek out porn business. After all, this is the company that put together a "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" video to promote the new "private surfing" function of its latest web browser.