SFW Some of the dozens of users of Bing today spotted a lewd sand carving semi-hidden in the Microsoft search engine's front page splash photo.

This looks perfectly innocent ... until you click to, er, enlarge

The snap, an overhead shot of an idyllic beach, sits behind the search bar on Bing.com. The crude anatomical artwork was clocked about three hours ago, and may have been there even longer. You can see the offending appendage in the lower right-hand corner of the picture:

Yup, that's a penis

What a dick move. Our probing investigative team in the UK earlier had a stiff drink, took a close look, and verified this was legit and not a prank Photoshop. In the past hour, the Bing team got wise to the sandy schlong and edited out the free willy on its premier dot-com.

Bang, and the chopper is gone

We've asked Microsoft for comment on the matter, but so far Redmond has yet to poke its head out on this one. Hopefully the person responsible for this cock-up won't be given the shaft. ®

Updated to add

A Microsoft spokesperson told us the Windows giant has nothing to say.