Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft Bing’

Bing versus Google: Day by Day, Blow by Blow

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

I told myself it wasn’t going to be like this: checking the StatCounter stats for US search engine market share daily.

US Search Engine Market Share June 2009

US Search Engine Market Share June 2009

One day Bing rises above Yahoo and overtakes the number two slot in the US…the next day, Bing’s glory is behind it and the market share has fallen.

Bing is new, and it will probably take a few months before things settle down and Bing finds its proper place in the industry. Above or below Yahoo, it’s almost certainly going to be significantly behind Google.

From its low on June 7, Bing has crept back to recapture 1.34 percent of the market for a total of 6.95 percent of the US market share. Not bad – but still third.

What’s most telling is where the percentages are coming from. Google gave up 63 percent of Bing’s market share gain – the rest coming from a mixture of AOL, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and “other”.

Why is it that Google is losing the larger chunk of market share? I would have thought Google users would be more loyal than your average Ask Jeeves user. It could be that Google’s market share is large enough that a certain percentage is simply always going to flock to the newest and “best” search engine…sorry, decision engine. If you’re an Ask Jeeves user, you’re probably pretty faithful since such a small portion of the US uses it.

So right now it looks like Yahoo is in the middle of a Google – Microsoft search engine battle. Not really a fair fight, but at least Microsoft has the deep pockets to keep fighting versus Cuil or WolframAlpha.

It’s also interesting to note where Microsoft is airing its Bing advertisements on TV. Watching the Daily Show on Comedy Central last night, we were shown two advertisements for Bing. I guess Microsoft figures the average Daily Show watcher is somewhat new-savvy and is more likely to get online to learn more about topics that interest them. Enter Bing.

Want to learn more about Peter Schiff and his 2007 book Crash Proof? Then Microsoft would prefer you Bing! it.

Will Bing continue to grow at Google’s expense? Maybe, maybe not. In the meantime, I might pick up a copy of Schiff’s book and see if I can learn something. Heading over to Google to learn more…

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By: Zack S.

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Why Microsoft’s Bing Won’t Ring in a New Search Engine Leader

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

Microsoft has officially chosen the name “Bing” for it’s new search engine.

Cheers rise up from the crowds…glitter and confetti fall from the heavens…Microsoft is welcomed as the new leader in online search engines because they turned theirs into a decision engine.

Wait, that’s not happening?

Sure - the general public doesn’t have access to Bing yet. It looks like it’ll be about June 3 before we can “Bing it” instead of just Googling it.

We aren’t going to go over what Bing is. Search Engine Land has already done that extensively, and they’ve done a great job.

Instead, this is a look at what Bing isn’t.

We can state the obvious, just like SEL did: Bing is not a Google killer.

While it’s unlikely that Microsoft will flop like Cuil and Wolfram Alpha have, it’s doubtful the Redmond-based company will gain much on industry leader Google.

Why? Well as Josh Bernoff stated on Adage, Bing has to be better and qualitatively different. From what we’ve seen so far, it isn’t.

There are some nice features in Bing like the IP-based localization of the search results. If you simply did a search for the latest Pixar movie, Bing looks like it will give you the show times for the movie in your area at the top of the results. That’s pretty neat.

Bing also looks like it will include a little more media on the front page of its search engine results page than Google.

Okay…

But will that tear away the Google faithful? Will the reported $80 million marketing campaign do the job? Can they really catch up with Google?

In short, no.

Yahoo will probably fare the worst in terms of search engine market share. Maybe that is Microsoft’s plan. A Microsoft-Yahoo partnership would still probably be the best thing for a real Google competitor.

Aside from people stopping by to give Bing a try, Google will probably remain the main search engine for most users. It helps that Firefox uses Google as the default.

ZDNet did a great article about Bing, including 10 burning questions you might have about the new “decision engine”. The two that jumped out at me are “Is Bing the right brand?” and “Will Bing be differentiated enough to woo new users?” No, and No.

We wrote before that for Microsoft to truly gain market share against Google, they would need to amaze us and come up with something completely revolutionary.

Bing needs to be a fully social media integrated interface, with a search engine built into a much larger online system. Simply rebranding and retooling MSN and Live Search will not do to compete with Google.

Maybe Microsoft is still angling for a partnership or purchase of Yahoo. I know those 850 million cell phone users that Yahoo has access to are still pretty attractive to Microsoft.

I suppose on June 3 or 4, I’ll head over to Bing.com or whatever the final URL will be and play around with Microsoft’s new toy.

Then on June 5 when I’m looking for news about Major League Baseball, I’ll head to Google and get the latest scores.

By: Zack S.

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Posted in Blog Posts | 2 Comments »