How Bing, British Airways and others made a sandy penis famous

On 17 August, 2017, Microsoft's Bing search engine cast a global spotlight to a wonderfully juvenile beach prank that quickly (and inevitably) went viral on social media.

Said prank – a deckchair-sized sand drawing of a gloriously chunky phallus – has since made its way to British Airways' homepage and, as IBTimesUK has discovered, countless holiday guide articles, accommodation booking sites and the official website for a Dubai-based "boutique development advisory and hospitality management company".

The stealthy schlong rose to fame yesterday after eagle-eyed Bing searchers spotted the penis in an overhead photograph of a beach on the site's homepage.

The otherwise innocuous photo pictures a sun-kissed, sandy idyll, but adjacent to the stunningly, translucent sea and below a cluster of deckchairs lies the unmistakable outline of a particular piece of human anatomy.

Seeing that the stoic Johnson had entered into the annals of internet infamy, Microsoft took action and hastily edited it out of the photo. They neglected to officially comment on the salacious snafu.

Not content with being a one-hit wonder, The Register clocked the penis again, this time nestled among holiday offers on the British Airways homepage.

A BA spokesperson told IBTimes UK that the company was "so distracted by the beautiful Croatian coastline and last minute package holiday deals from £129 per person that we didn't spot the naughty artwork hidden in the photograph."

"We're sorry and have now swapped the image for that of another picture postcard destination we fly to," it added.

Again the penis was removed, but, at the time of writing, lives on at Quillon Hospitality, multiple Booking.com listings, and at The Abreu Express in an article titled "The natural wonders of Croatia".

But how did this happen? A quick reverse Google Image search reveals that the Mediterranean member was captured in a photo that is on sale at stock image websites. You can even see it in a stock video.

The photograph, taken via a drone, is the work of "mbbirdy" and depicts Zlatni rat beach in the town of Bol located off the southern coast of the Croatian island of Brač. Brilliantly, the beach is also often called Golden Horn.

Whether the image will remain on sale is yet to be seen, but regardless of its commercial fate, the "Bing dong" will never be forgotten.