Google and Bing battle to track Santa's sleigh after Norad switches sides Bing, Microsoft's rival search engine, has mounted a Christmas coup by poaching the cooperation of Norad, the US military's nuclear command centre, which has been tracking Saint Nicholas for more than half a century. As well as websites, noth sides have also built smartphone apps to allow people on the move to keep up with the sleigh. Google's is only available for Android, while Norad and Microsoft have made apps for the Apple iOS and Windows Phone 8. Father Christmas starts his journey at approximately 0900 GMT, and according to Norad, he usually starts at the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean and travels west. At time of writing, Santa was headed to the Kuril Islands and had already delivered more than 335 million presents, according to Norad, while Google Santa tracker page appeared to be broken. "Santa's elves are working hard to fix it," it said. Norad's Santa tracker dates back to 1955 when a Colorado Springs store ran an advertisement encouraging local children to call a special telephone hot line to speak to Santa. A printing error meant that the phone number for the Director of Operations at Continental Air Defense Command (Conad) was published instead, leading to the centre being inundated by calls from excited children. The head of the Conad, which later became Norad, instructed his staff to give the children updates on Santa's position and the tradition was born.