PLUG

In the ever-waging wars of technology these days, it seems that Google, Apple, Facebook and Twitter are king…er, kings.

Each with individual attributes making them wildly successful and seemingly sustainable.

And while the smartphone wars wage on – iPhone vs. HTC Hero vs. HTC Evo 4, etc. – there are also wars in search – both the search engine kind as well as the Web searching kind.

Microsoft’s Bing has been gaining some steam (pun intended) with its visually captivating background images as well as some really sophisticated and useful travel options for booking hotels and plane flights.

Not to mention, Bing recently got the Colbert bump from a big charity push on The Colbert Report. Every time Stephen said the word “bing” on his show this past Monday, the Internet search engine donated $2,500 to benefit the Gulf Coast oil spill. And boy did he, racking up nearly $100,000 in a hilarious bit that lasted through the whole show.

But more interesting than Bing is what Google announced on its official blog last week: now you can add your favorite photo or image to the background of your Google homepage!

Now hang on a second there, isn’t that what Bing does? Interesting….

Well, it’s not a a bad idea. People want personalization and people like pretty.

The white was getting a little boring, despite the cute changes to the Google logo every major event (like celebrating Pacman’s 30th anniversary — which, by the way, you can still play at google.com/pacman).

But hey, Bing does seem to be one of the few things that Microsoft is doing right these days…and the most significant aspect to note is that Microsoft’s name is never nearby. Not on The Colbert Report and certainly not anywhere on the searches.

Competition is welcome when it doesn’t make our decision-making process out of control, and luckily Yahoo!, AltaVista, Ask.com, Lycos and all those other forgotten ’90s memories still kind of suck.

Watch The Colbert ‘Bing’ HERE.