DETROIT. In a city known for its crumbling infrastructure, one local landmark has managed to preserve a piece of 1998 in a way that the Detroit Historical Society can only envy.
Recently at Don Bing's Rare & Used Bookstuff's four-story labyrinth, where the dust has its own Dewey Decimal code, the local institution was awarded "Worst Website of the Year." The Association For Quality Web Standards hands this award off each year to the worst maintained websites on the interweb.
Bing's inconvenient and incomprehensible website has been confusing patrons and web surfers alike for years. Before we knew Don Bing the man, we knew the legend: the proud troglodyte. The "About Us" page of his digital domain remains a defiant monument to the analog era, declaring that Bing is being "dragged kicking and screaming into the computer age." Based on the current website's performance, he has successfully kicked and screamed his way into a total stalemate.
A veritable digital time capsule, the site doesn't just look old; the "About Us" reads like a forgotten 1998 brochure someone scanned and spilled coffee on. You know, like something you might actually find on one of Old Bing's cluttered, cobwebbed shelves.
"The site is the digital equivalent of that fluorescent light in John's store that's been flickering for six years," said Geraldine Marsh, panel president of the Association for Quality Website Standards.
Among the site's notable features:
- The /press.php Ghost: A page that throws a 404 Error when you try to fetch it. Classic.
- OCR Nightmares: Book listings with descriptions that look like they were typed by pounding a keyboard with one's fist.
- The Nephew Protocol: A navigation structure that seems fundamentally broken or at minimum confusing. It screams, "we hired someone's nephew in 2003 and never looked back."
While other businesses pivot to AI-integrated "user journeys," the Resistance of Bing's website stands as a technophobe hero. It is proof that half-assing the computer age is worse than avoiding it entirely. By maintaining a site that is a literal obstacle course, the store ensures that only the strongest, most desperate bibliophiles will ever actually find a book.
When reached for comment, the website reportedly timed out.