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Bing Gains 10% Marketshare
samzbest writes "According to ComScore's qSearch, Microsoft's retaliation against Google search, Bing, has gained significant market share, now facilitating close to 10% of US searches. That's a gain of two large points in five months."
With such a retarded name I didn't expect Bing to reach such popularity.
Are they only counting the places where people go to the page and do a search or are they counting all the 'embedded' searches which are snuck into other apps like IE and Windows Live to boost numbers?
Thought so.
No sig today...
It probably doesn't hurt that IE 8 updates make Bing the default search engine if you go the 'express' route. Even adding google as a search provider is weird - you can't just select it, you have to go to a web page and download the search engine provider package or whatever.
Still 90% to go.
I wonder if they get that far. I think Google is so fixated in the minds of people that it's hard to get it out. It's even on the homepages of not only younger people but also the digital elderly who are less computer savvy. Bing has to offer more and better search results then Google does before it gains any more then 20% of the market I think.
Don't forget, humans are conservative creatures, they only like changing when it saves money or reduces fat quickly.
It's not really news. Bing is just a rebranding of MSN Search. In June 2007, MSN had a spike of 16% market share (http://blog.compete.com/2007/07/09/june-search-share-msn-live-google-yahoo-ask/). Given the huge marketing behind Bing as well as the conversion of practically all search engines on every site that has anything to do with Microsoft, I would say, meh, no big deal.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I wonder if there's any relation between this, and the number of users who've upgraded too IE8 and just not bothered/realised that they can change the default in-browser search client?
So there I was, scribbling down some notes off the PC screen by hand, when I reached for the keyboard and Ctrl-S'd.
I'm shocked - *SHOCKED* - I tell ya. I find it hard to believe that ComScore would report such a thing.
Yes, I know the numbers may be valid but when a company is reporting on another company, with whom they are partnered, I find it hard to invest any credibility in the report.
Yes, but how much of this market share comes from old Windows Live Search users? A quick Google search (haha, guess I'm not in that 10%) reveals old statistics that placed Live at around 10% also. Is this really news?
Go ahead, you can probably blame some of this on me -- and people like me. I was in the market for an XBox 360 Arcade (with intent to add a HDD on my own) and had found through slick deals mention that if you went to bing and searched for Dell and clicked on the cashback link you could get an XBox 360 Arcade for 15%-30% off depending on when you do it.
... or even just hitting it up every couple days to see what I could find. Kept with Google on my other searches (Firefox and Chrome still put me through the same default search engine). But for a while, my desire to save a couple bucks probably pushed up Bing's marketshare. I can't help it, I blame my overly frugal parents.
... so what happened and who is giving me the money back? Is it Microsoft putting ad dollars to hard work for Bing or the retailer giving up some more profit margin in exchange for moving product? If anyone could shed light on how I was able to get better deals on -- sometimes any -- products on Amazon by first going through Bing, I'd appreciate it. And this isn't like a few pennies click through ad revenue, this is like tens of dollars across several purchases. Am I really that inept at how the world works to not figure this out?
Now, from what I read, your mileage may vary. Meaning you got anywhere from $20 to $30 off the price but you still paid $200. It was just recredited to your paypal account. It happened/happens with other large retailers like Amazon so I found myself periodically using Bing to squeeze 10% off a purchase here or there
I'm not sure how this was orchestrated. I mean, I thought commodities like DVDs and CDs and XBoxes were already shaven down to the some of the lowest prices online
So in the end, I apologize for causing all that cancer. You are correct to direct your slurs at me but I assure you that as soon as those deals dry up I will stop using Bing.
My work here is dung.
I actually found them "re-branding" their search to be catchier insulting. it's like pop music, they are just trying to be trendy to cater to people who are easily amused. bing is just a shiny object.
Though Murdoch and Wolfram be analytical opposites, their property behaviors seem similar.
Can Alpha parse FOX?
I've been seeing a lot of machines lately with the Bing Toolbar installed, and the client having no idea how it got there. Automated updates on a Windows machine are nice, but sometimes you get the latest helpful tool bar offering along with it. Sun Java, Adobe Flash, etc. often offer tool bars and other goodies that although are not harmful, might be unwanted. I'm not sure how much this would skew actual results, but it has to count for a few points of market share and larger reported install base of tool bars and hence search engine use.
There is no "1% Linux". Perhaps you're confused by the many distributions of Linux that offer you a choice between a Desktop (ubuntu), a server supporting the latest hardware (Fedora), a server which runs forever (CentOS), a bootable USB... well you get the point. With Linux you have choices.
So please take your attitude over to your 10% bing *LOL* (MSN search down 5 points in two months isn't a "win for bing", it's a LOSS for microsoft) with you and have a home professional ultimate day.
Ehud
This may have to do with the fact that I.E. uses it automatically and many users don't think about switching. I don't think we'll see people Binging anytime soon.
iburnaga.blogspot.com
I wonder if this has to do with Window 7. Its the default search, and they bury the hell out of google to replace it.
When I look at AWstats for my site:
Google 18020 pages (linked to from Google)
Google (Images) 976 pages
Bing 226 pages
And from Google Analytics:
Top traffic sources:
Google 26,738 visits 85.24%
Yahoo 676 visits 2.16%
Bing 346 visits 1.10%
Admittedly the site is not about shopping or entertainment - it's mainly about technical topics which maybe colors the results.
Invisible to writers of malware?
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
...not backed by a global monopoly with 20+ years of entrenchment.
Just think of all of the captive Windows and IE users out there that can have MS-Whatever shoved down their throats.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
However, they did this same strategy with domainNames to get IIS up in rankings in late 2007 through early 2008. How are they doing now?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Bing Is Not Google
Why yes, I'm binging on the internet and I still can't get my fill!
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
It's not surprising they have gained market share, but it is not because of the quality of the search engine, rather heavy handed forcing of the engine on unwitting customers. Somehow, many of my friends and families computers started defaulting to the bing search engine in both IE and FireFox, perhaps after a windows update. Microsoft changed the defaults of the browsers without giving the user an option and it was not trivial to return the default search engine to Google. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but I didn't like it.
I think there is always going to be a segment of the userbase that hates a "top dog" and will switch if they think one particular company or product is getting too powerful. The differences between searches in Google and Bing are minor, so being that is the case why would 10% switch? For no reason other than because there is satisfaction in not doing what everybody else is doing.
Just my 2 cents.
"two big percentage points"? No, all points are the same. Please don't try and editorialize or sensationalize.
And also, these stats put another way say that Google et al have 90% marketshare. Windows also has a 90% marketshare and we refer to that as a monopoly.
These increases are very likely to correlate (causally, no less!) to Infection Explorer 8 being pushed hard, leveraging the majority number of computers that have M-Windows installed.
Capitalism is about having or obtaining a large quantity of something at price P, "talking it up" through Marketing or other bovine excrement until people want it, and then setting new price NP > P when they come asking for it.
Or, in clearer Slashdot format:
1) Have a large install base.
2) Push your browser hard onto the install base and set the default page to Bing (just as Google arranged with Mozilla).
3) ???? (bovine excrement)
4) PROFIT!!!
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
I just got mine from the laptop I purchased a while back. That's a pretty nice incentive...
Everyone is speaking of trickery to get the users. I switched my homepage over by choice - and I'm a Mac Safari user.
Reason? Much against my expectation, I found I liked the daily pictures rather than the blank of Google. I fully expected to prefer the clean look of Google (after all, it was that rather than quality of results which made me move from Alta Vista to Google many years ago.) but instead I found it was time for a change and I like the different appearance and the tagging they do I find interesting.
Search quality results - variable. Some good, some not so. It's no effort to just click the search box top-right and start using Google instead however, so effectively by having Bing as the homepage with a quickly accessible Google search I've got quick access to two potential sets of results.
So yes, I switched over for the pretty pictures. Yes, that's a shallow reason. It's doing no harm however, and I like it.
Cheers,
Ian
It is amazing how a simple campaign of drive-by installs and default check boxes that change your search provider can increase your market share!!!
With the Google top 1000 sites being theoretically offered massive cash handouts for abandoning Google it's obvious why consumers would switch to Bing. After all, regular consumers work just like the stock market and adjust their behavior based on any rumor, right?
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
White Christmas
Ok, lets try:
http://www.google.com/search?q=bing&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a/
Now the other way:
http://www.bing.com/search?q=google&go=&form=QBRE/
Does anyone actually trust Bing?
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Perhaps you're confused by the many distributions of Linux that offer you a choice between a Desktop (ubuntu), a server supporting the latest hardware (Fedora), a server which runs forever (CentOS)
Since when is Fedora not for desktops?
a bootable USB
By now, most popular distributions' live CDs can be installed to a 1 GB SD card or USB stick using UNetbootin.
But seriously, the "1% desktop Linux" probably measures desktop-like tasks such as web browsing. If a site with wide appeal gets 1% of its hits from web browsers that self-report as having been built for Linux, then close to 1% of web users use Linux.
...I, for one, welcome our new websearch overlords.
Is this 10 percent greater than the combination of MSN and Windows Live Search? Is it a statistical bump (has the combination of MSN and Windows Live occasionally bump like that)?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
As a 'hands-on creative' (louche wastrel) who has to source a lot of random materials and knick-knacks from around the internet, I have to admit to turning to Bing more frequently.
Google seems to struggle with practical relevancy in its results - Bing seems to return pages of companies offering the things I'm looking for, in my country (UK).
Don't get me wrong - as an ex-web monkey, I've loathed Microsoft's online game for years, but if they can even begin to offer an alternative to THE GOOGLE, that's got to be a good thing.
That said - Bing still issn't looking likely to replace Google as my default search for a wee while yet.
Google's page is simple and pure. There is one logo and a search bar.
Bing has decided to make their search page bloated with graphics that actually update.
Do you know how painful it is to remote desktop or vnc to someone's computer that has yahoo, bing, or some other search engine besides google set as their homepage? grr!
Valkyrie is about to die! Wizard needs food -- badly!
Bing doesn't have a 10% share of total searches, according to the scores. The total search % for all Microsoft sites is 9.9% however, which includes Bing and other search options from all the MS sites. Just as the total search % for Google includes all Google sites, not just the main Google Search engine.
If you look at the expanded search stats below the first blurb on ComScore's press release, and do the very simple math, Bing has 5.6% of total search. Just as the main Google search engine does not have 65.4% of total searches, but 44.4%.
I do wish folks would read and do the math before claiming Bing or Google has such and such a percentage.
Bing != All MS search queries
Julie Moult is an idiot.
Microsoft sucks at anything they do!!!
Java is my common irritant with this. Whenever you run the install it hides a checkbox to load some type of crapware by default. I think it actually looks at your computer because it never seems to offer a piece of junk that you already have. It has offered the Google toolbar, MSN toolbar, Open Office, and now:
Bing...
It is very simple. You're not paying Bing to get trafic, so you get no trafic from Bing. I guess that anyway, all those visits are from their bot...
The reason why I'm not using Bing is that everytime I used it, results were irrelevant.
heise.de reported the same thing yesterday, pointing out that Yahoo lost more marketshare, than bing won (and google won marketshare, too). So given Microsofts collaboration with yahoo, this should rather read "Google takes marketshare from Microsoft+Yahoo!"...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Chandler Bing has his own search engine.
Wow.
To bad the website is still ugly. I want fast loads and simple design/colors not large pictures of a moose. I say good day to you M$.
~Mekkah
No, really:
http://www.bing.com/search?q=your+mom
can I get this analogy in a term I can understand? Like perhaps Cars per Library of Congress?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
For whatever technical reasons, the Bing image search results return more relevant and quality imagery than google. I haven't actually switched over for text based searches yet though, but I might just out of laziness. Maybe that was the Bing guys' plan..make a really good image search (read: porn) engine in hopes that people will over look the relatively weak text search functions.
I find myself using Bing quite a bit. The reason - if I'm logged into gmail or Blogger, then Google shows me as logged in when I search in another tab. I can't log out of Google search while staying logged in to gmail or blogger, so I use Bing. Why do I want to log out? I don't really know - it's not like Google can't still identify me, but it just feels icky to have them blatantly flaunt that they track my searches.
A couple of other items of note - for C# programmers, Bing is nicer in that it allows the sharp sign in a search, as opposed to google which doesn't (even though it does a mightly fine job of returning relavent results anyway). And, probably the best feature of Bing is that it's image search is really nice. You just scroll down and more results are loaded. It's worth using Bing for that feature alone.
However, the trouble with numbers like the ones in the article are that very few people will ever use only Bing. Google is still the de facto search engine, and Bing is an alternative for those times when you want something google doesn't do the way you want it to.
Fortunately for you and your dirty little secret, Microsoft's paying the bills. They finally found something to spend their billions on. Suck 'em dry, boys!
From the OED: Bing: noun 1: A heap or pile, formerly of stones, earth, trees, dead bodies, as well as of corn, potatoes, and the like.
( As quoted in "A changing world of words: studies in English historical lexicography" By Javier E. Díaz Vera, p 113, sometimes visible via Google Books.)
Why, I did a Bing search myself just the other day. I was using IE for the one thing at work that requires it, and I didn't know that Bing was the default in IE.
It only took me about 15 seconds to change it, though.
Seriously, though, other than the fact that it's the Evil Empire's search, I think this is mostly good. Competition breeds better products.
Even though I loathe Microsoft's entire mentality and their sociopathic business tricks, I think having more major search engines in the play is better than having yet another de-facto monopoly gaining unbreakable (for all practical purposes) grip on many aspects of our lives.
The optimal for us, the consumers, solution is a set of at least 5 companies constantly at each other's throats but never actually able to gain upper hand. Google is already getting far too big for its own breaches and has become a power ultimately even more dangerous to the general public than Microsoft ever was (and don't get me even started at the laughable "don't be evil" corporate PR stunt).
It is high time for some competitors to cut it down to size, before its too late.
Pics or it didn't happen.
Julie Moult is an idiot.
The savings that you received are subsidized. MS is literally paying for them. Bait to entice you over just long enough to win (or lose) the mindshare war.
I didn't want to provide the links in my post because that would have been a really really shill like thing to do. But here's one I took advantage of last month.
It's not hard to find several more.
Every time I've used Bing the experience has been substandard to google. The results I want are always buried lower.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso
Seriously? I don't personally know anyone that uses Bing, and I even know a few people that aren't even aware of its existence.
I know that who I kow is a very small slice of "everyone", but still...where are these legions of people using Bing? Could the fact that many Windows Mobile phones use Bing as their default search engine be contributing to this number?
Living With a Nerd
I think some of it is due to people like me who use it exclusively for Bing Cashback. A 25% cashback offer on an HP laptop is hard to resist.
The OS experience has hardly changed since Windows 3.0, and Google is still barely better than Yahoo! circa '97 in that I'm still entering abstract terms and searching through pages of mostly useless results. I can search Wkipedia without Google.
If these guys would take the money they make and pour it back into the only product they each have which really makes them money, then we would see huge increases in the utility of those products, instead of better battery life on my laptop I could get an OS that does things for me, or I could ask questions to the search engine and get answers, or who knows what else.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
It's most likely due to it being default. Bing is one of the most requested features to be switched back to Google that I get from end users.
I know it's cool to bash M$ and all, but bing gives me good results. A lot of time I need to go a fwe pages deep in google to find something(all my searches are boolean phrases) but bing gives a lot of my results on page 1. not sure why, but bing seems "snappy" with all the css they have....
Website Hosting
That's 10% of the U.S.A. marketshare. On the world scale it's probably not even 2%.
My own site stats showed a big spike in Bing referrals a few months ago - I thought it odd so I looked at the logs, and it turns out the vast majority of that traffic was coming from Microsoft's own IP addresses. Still haven't found an explanation.
No, it's a 'win' for Microsoft. Having the 'hot new search engine' is worth beaucoup advertising dollars. They can rewrite the advertising contracts and charge more cause it's a 'new system'.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
I know people are claiming that MS is using their offered rebates as a way to temporarily win mindshare, but if they run rebates like any old manufacturer does then they are a permanent addition to Bing. I would have summarized how it works, but I didn't sleep much. So here is someone elses summary:
I would say the vast majority are being generated by mouse over ads. Now the real question is who is actually
using it, nobody that I know of.
Got Code?
My mother in law spends a large amount of time on the Club Bing website, playing their stupid games in order to win points for prizes. The word games there are silly, most centering on "how many words can you make out of these seven letters". Every time you type in a word, it does a Bing search for that word. Get enough people trying to win Bing points for free things, and it will skew the search results.
"Also it sure is interesting that very few search results show up when I put the term google into bing, isn't it?. I can keep searching more reasons if you want, but the end result is that the quality of results and accuracy is piss poor. Dogpile still beats results/accuracy of bing constantly."
So your complaint is that Bing doesn't return with 2,100,000 results, coming up short with 163,000?
The first few pages on Bing have everything you could possibly need on Google if that's the only search term you're interested in.
Tell me something google-related you CAN'T find by adding another word or two to narrow down your search.
Can't speak for everybody, but I don't have a problem with the quality or accuracy of Bing's searches. I use Google because that's where I set my home page, but I've actually used Bing recently, specifically when Google drowns my results in a sea of links.
Why on earth would you apologize for using a feature of a search engine over another? That would mean that Bing has a useful feature that you found valuable and as such, used it accordingly over the competition. Personally, I would gladly do all of my purchases through bing if it was getting me 10-20% off and would be happy to bump Microsoft's numbers in the process since they are saving me 10%-20%.
And don't blame the parents for being "overly frugal," because if you aren't shopping for the cheapest price (especially when it is so easy to find...) then you really need to rethink your spending habits.
Funny story on this one. I was talking to someone about Bing Cashback and so he went to bing and tried to navigate the site and find information about the cashback program. However, he couldn't find anything. We tried using the search and the site navigation, and it was nowhere. I knew I had seen the main cashback page, and simply said to just Google it instead. So, yes that's right, he had to Google Bing (and it was the very first result). I think that is an indication of a search engine failing when you have to use another search to even find it.
According to StatOwl.com, Bing has around 4% market share. However, it should be noted that they measure traffic driven to actual sites as a result of using search engines for their metrics. So if we assume both ComScore and StatOwl are correct in their reported data. Then around 6% of the new Bing traffic can't seem to find what they are looking for with Bing.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Just like GIMP is that sub/dom mask thing and not "GNU Image Manipulation Program" and the reason why people don't want GIMP ('cos it's all about pervy sex).
Yesterday Google changed the layout of the igoogle page in Canada to match what it started around a year ago in the states. Over the past year many countries have suffered the same fate. There was however a work around that would let people use the main google.com page by going to http://www.google.com/ig?hl=all and this worked up until yesterday. It's very surprising that Google would force a significant and controversial change like this on its user base after over a year of people complaining and asking and googling for ways to change it back... I'd hope that they could at least figure out how much of the population that uses igoogle tried to get it to work with the established layout by talking to people on the appropriate team and using their own Google tools. I’m one of the many upset users who are now going to have to consider the value of my google branded homepage and if it is worth getting used to the new layout when the current people in charge over at Google don’t seem to understand the significance of keeping an option for the old layout that is in many opinions a much better use of space. I might or might not switch to bing, or yahoo, or any number of other sites but I’m honestly strongly considering leaving the igoogle home page after many happy years.
BlueBadger
First off... adding Google to IE is much easier than adding Bing to FF.
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1351751&cid=29242497
Cue the "yeah but who would want to add bing to ff anyway? lololol"
Second off... no, the express installation route leaves your current default search intact. In the odd situation that it doesn't detect your default search, it -is- presented *right in your face* what settings it will be applying.
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1351751&cid=29241927
Cue the "yeah, but people never read dialogs and just click next next next"
Now if you're saying that MS should make the default Google, even if the user's current default (from IE6/7) is, say, Yahoo... well I don't even know where to begin with -that- school of thought.
Since every point increase for bing'le must be a consequent "loss" for google, any "down" for google over the last 2 months could easily be explained by (1) der bing'le being default on all of the new W7 installs/machines, and (2) all microserfs being flagellated into using it exclusively and as often as cpu-ably possible.
Massaged user stats aside, if google==Al Gore, then bing'le==Dan Quayle.
Look, I've been using the online sphere since 110 baud modems. Yeah there was a bit more before me but not by much. I've since then been on the cutting edge for most of it since then and have seen the rise and fall of various search engines. Webcraweler (AoL), Yahoo, and then Google.
Google got it right and has now market dominance which if you don't know capitalism means that they are entrenched and not going anywhere. The idea that MS can somehow break that is folly at best.
I could go on with a thesis level dissertation about why Google is not about to be displaced by MS but honestly /. is not the place for it. And to boot I'd have to deal with the trolls that come with it. Suffice to say that yay for MS getting a bit of the share. They had the war chest to make it so. But Google is still the 1000lb monkey.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
For the naysayers regarding it keeping the current default search around... voila, screenshot..
http://blogs.howtogeek.com/mysticgeek/files/2008/03/18.png
Cue the: "fake! photoshopped! faaaaaake!" /nokarma/anon
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1351751&cid=29242497
In summary: it's far easier to add Google (or other search engines) to IE, than it is to add Bing (or other search engines) to FF.
( Opera trumps both, but only if you're aware of the right-click-on-form-field deal - FF has this partially implemented as keywords, not as a form adding a new search engine in the search field drop-down )
I'm in the same boat. I use Fatwallet cash back, but lately bing has been pumping a TON of money into their shopping and cash back. Heck I think even Newegg was 6 percent there for a while. Before I hit checkout on a cart I always look on Fatwallet, SlickDeals, Google Shopping, and Bing Shopping. I love getting those random hundred dollar checks in the mail for crap I was going to buy at a given price anyways.
It's not surprising considering three things:
1. They advertise it on TV (with misleading ads... why is Bing a "decision engine"?).
2. It's installed with some apps that used to install the Google toolbar.
3. Some websites that used to imbed direct links are now imbedding Bing searches instead.
I guess there's no accounting for taste.
I'm not sure how this was orchestrated. I mean, I thought commodities like DVDs and CDs and XBoxes were already shaven down to the some of the lowest prices online ... so what happened and who is giving me the money back?
It's out-and-out bribery by Microsoft. The search market is worth billions in ad revenue alone, plus the bonus of controlling public perception: If you search for "server" on Google, the first page of results contains "Ubuntu Server" and "Mac OS X Server" and the Bing results don't. And on Bing the first on the list of "related searches" is "Windows Home Server." Getting you to use Bing in the long-term is worth more to them than paying you $10 every once in a while -- think about it, if you buy a single Windows Server license instead of installing Ubuntu Server, they've already made back their money.
Troll? WTF? He just destroyed the FUD being spewed by GGP.
Back in the early haydays of the Internet, if you couldn't find something with your favorite search engine, there was always a dozen others you could try. Yahoo, Hotbot, Infoseek, Netscape, Lycos, Ask Jeeves, Infoseek, AOL, Altavista, etc etc. It was likely that you could find different results with each engine.
Everyone is correct that Google dominated the market because they got it right, but the problem that arises is the same that comes with any monopoly. If I can't find something with Google then I'm pretty much SOL. Even when I know for a fact what I'm looking for is out there somewhere, Google has failed me many times. I truly look forward to competitors which take different approaches, because ultimately it gives users better options for searching the web.
rather than the usual old billy borg, can we please use the following pic in the future for "bing" related stories? http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_c80VLgi6U98/Ry8F5zaAKdI/AAAAAAAAABs/sq8bd5DQRXE/s200/chandler.jpg
That would be an issue if Bing wasn't gaining share by displacing Yahoo. Google is maintaining its share. May be an issue in the long run. For example, Linux got into the data center by displacing Unix, in particular Solaris. Now Linux is growing installs faster than Windows, slowly shifting the server market share (both are growing in deployments, Linux is just growing faster).
Bing Gains 10% Marketshare
[...]now facilitating close to 10% of US searches.[...]
So, it had 0% before or is the summary incorrectly using "stronger words" to get attention?
It would be massively more interesting if this "Bing" search engine returned accurate and unbiased results even 10% of the time. Rather that informing us that M$'s inept garbage has been sneaked into places in order to artificially inflate numbers, please just let us know if the thing ever works.
. . . Microsoft is the beleaguered Macintosh of search engines.
:wq
and Microsoft can pay more people to use it and gain another 10%, but that won't make it any better.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Well, then again so is Google.
When I want a scientific answer, not a bunch of ads. I go to SCIRUS.
http://www.scirus.com/srsapp
Try any search engine to find out why a third walkie talkie gets feedback when two walkie talkie's "talk" keys are pressed. EVERY site will try to sell you walkie talkies. SCIRUS has the answer. (But it is so scientific I cannot figure out what the answer means.)
I bet it has something to do with destructive interference in the electromagnetic waves, and synchronizing the two walkie talkies would allow the third to hear both voices.(?) Maybe?
- I live the greatest adventure anyone could possibly desire. - Tosk the Hunted
If 10% Bing is "shit", then what does that make 1% Linux?
You've torpedoed your own argument. The company that has a monopoly on the desktop can't grab more than 10% market share for search. The king of search is still Google, and Google runs on Linux. QED
Anecdote: Microsoft was pitching student-discounted Windows 7 on my uni campus a few days ago. After waiting patiently through a demonstration of the silly window gestures, I asked a rep how I would go about opening an SSH terminal. His recommendation was "go to Google and download something".
Might be more representative of how people actually use Bing. On numerous occasions since it made itself the default search provider he has to the amusement of myself and others used it to Bing for Google, then Google for Wikipedia, finally he uses wikipedia search.
I honestly can't think of a more roundabout way of doing this but It's like he's programme to always run through Google.
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
I love bing being a technology enthusiast, i wrote this original article based on comscore data if you can leave the comments on the main site i would appreciate it thanks.
This company should feel proud monopolizing an OS with a monopolized browser with a monopolized search engine.
Wait, you got bing cashback at Amazon? (And as to where the money is coming from, MS has the cash to spend billions on an advertising campaign. Probably a better use than naming a stadium or buying Yahoo, and it's more typical of MS to buy or bribe its way to success.)
Bing is default, and if you don't initially select an alternative, it takes some searching of Microsoft's 'search engine' chooser to find Google.
The terminology used is also confusing, so that the first items that appear for a search for Google are actually not for the search box at the top RHS of the window.
Microsoft are using obvious dirty tricks to steal market share, as they usually do. Time for another complaint to the EU.
i searched the name of the firm i work in combined with the city name of the main plant and bing just doesn't work for me at this time. First result from google: the google map with the address and the phone number. First result from bing: a telecommunications group in my city univeristy; yes, we partecipate to that group, but it's not the firm's website or anything useful to reach us. First useful result from bing: not yet at page 5. That's why i change the default search in every ie i deal with.
You can buy a lot of marketshare with as much cash as Microsoft has. Paying Verizon, e.g. to use Bing as the default search engine on their smart phones gets a lot of market share without having to actually bring user choice into the mix.
1. Its the default search in the default IE browser in MS Vista (aka 'seven'). The same drones that buy new PC's with whatever OS comes on them are the same drones that just type what they are looking for in a URL bar, and have absolutely no concept of 'choosing, and using, a specific search site'. As their new machines start to get slow, they will call their more intelligent friend to 'help', who will rip out MSIE and bing, and install FireFox and google, and the drones probably won't even notice the difference. (other than reduced malware and obnoxious ads) [But bing traffic will drop]
2. There seem to be a lot of 'tech sites' that have javascript-driven mini-pop-uplets, which are triggered when the pointer moves over targeted keywords, and which cause a (unrequested, and usually undesired) bing search to be run for that keyword. These seem to be hosted by something to do with intellitxt.com - I strongly suggest that you block that domain everywhere you can. (Adblock, noscript, privoxy, /etc/hosts, DNS servers, etc). Hopefully I'm not the only one thats noticed it, and as it gets added to the various "domains that crap comes from" lists, [bing traffic will drop]
3. Of course there is always the 1% thats due to the absolutely delusional MS kool-aid drinkers who'd gladly drink cyanide if it came in a pretty MS package or they had to pay an MS licensing fee to do so.
Only thing I'm using it for at the moment is Bing cash back. If you're searching for something that you can buy, many websites have teamed up with Bing to offer discounts and money back if you found the link through Bing. The deals aren't really that great though when you do the research, many of these websites are offering the same promotions via coupon codes and back entrances on their websites, and when it is a bargain, that can be accounted for by the fact that you pay the money all upfront and receive the money back later, after they've managed to earn interest and been able to do other things with your money (ala mail-in rebates). It's also a great way for these websites to promote itself with tech savvy buyers that know the ins and outs of bargain hunting on the Internet.
Indeed, if google does not hurry to go on the desktop, MS will phase them out by defaulting to bing IE on pre-installed personnal computers (let be remind you the disaster of MSN which was by default assaulting you to subscribe with any newly bought personnal computer) They do not have the choice. It's too dangerous to delay the entry on the personnal computer market since it will take hard work to make hardware manufacturers pre-install their OS.
The reason bing has grown in marketshare is 2 fold, and neither reason is due to it being any better than Google. Personally, I think it sucks. Based on my biased, unscientific research Bing results seemed to weigh Microsoft related URL's higher.
1. It is the default search engine for Windows. It is not trivial to change it to something else (google) with a fresh copy of Windows 7 (in face it is a PITA). Most users have MSN as their home page not because they like it, but because it is the default home page on their windows machine and they don't know how to change it.
2. It is cannabilizing from other MS searches. The marketshare for Live Search, MSN, etc has decreased.
Microsoft tries to be too many things at once. They have corporate ADD and it shows. Bing is a fad and will be phased out in 24 months. It was developed ONLY to compete with google and lower market share, not bring anything new or innovative to the table.
Bing has some nice features, and it looks pretty. Too bad they've already tipped their hand and you can't trust their search results.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/169750/bing_search_reveals_promicrosoft_results.html
the USofA market now accounts for 13% of the worldwide Internet access... and decreasing (with China, India, Brazil raising...)
come back when you'll have a more complete picture on Bing providing services friendly to a non-US audience, and we'll talk again
Here's how you do it in chromium:
(Just tested it, it works just fine. Now, let me change it back :D)
It is not the retailers; I've seen retailers requesting that you go through Bing so you get cashback. I suspect it is Microsoft, but I don't really know.
I smell the big M$ marketing BS coming on. I am sure this is just a quick tug at the marketing strings to try and promote the bing search engine, and maybe bring up their share value. I still only use google, and will indefinately, until someone proves that I get better results in bing then in google.
I guess Mark Cuban can save his millions now.
I noticed that within 24 hours (maybe less) of M$ buying Yahoo, Yahoo search was totally f**ked up! Yahoo returned search results that were heavily tainted in M$'s favor...just like Bing! Now I use Google where I used to use Yahoo.
The inaccurate headline sounded like bing gained 10% more marketshare, reality was that they have done the big accomplishment of reaching 10% overall marketshare... You have to wonder, after all those efforts including attempts at generating media hype , the yahoo deal, the dows' machines suddenly using Bing and all the fanboys posting in sites like slashdot about how it is supposedly justifiable to change the search bar - This is all what they reached? Seriously, MS and all the devices and software they control and have set the default to point to Bing was not able to do much more than this? oh no.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
And what's the percent of worldwide searches? Yeah, I thought so.
Google Search is dominant in a pretty significant proportion of the billion or so internet users. When Bing gets 10% of that then we can talk.
I can only think it's because they've severly ditched MSN to get Bing's numbers up.
I work in several PC labs on my college's campus. Some of them are "classroom labs" where they only have IE not both IE & Firefox.
IE's search bar used to default to MSN but now the minute they launched Bing that changed. At first I thought the search was being hijacked to some search site I'd never heard of and sent of a note to IT. Then I saw the commercials and felt silly.
Someone said MSN used to have 16% marketshare. Well if Bing is up to 10% I wonder if MSN is now down to 6% because of these kinds of shenanigans.
A shiny background picture goes a long way!
Bing bang, the witch (google) is dead. Oh wait, it's only 10%. BFD.
Yes... it's all about porn... The cause of, and solution to all of man's problems. Well, that and beer. The superior ability of Bing to bring back hardcore video thumbnails puts Google to shame. I full expect their market share to expand until Google incorporates this feature.
The real chuckle with IE8 and its search provider choices: MS has moved Google to the second page of search providers and some of the 1st page choices are a joke...
Big whoop, wanna fight about it?
Did that take you all day to come up with that?
people start saying "just bing for foo and its in the first couple of pages".
I actually hear people saying "I Googled it but couldn't find..." when they used Bing to perform the search.
Google has the mindshare... even if Bing picks up marketshare, it will be a long time before anyone considers anything but Google to be the standard in internet search.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
I was at a customer of mine working on a Windows PC and I needed to search something. Well, Bing was the standard search engine and anything else just didn't configure. So I accessed Bing unwillingly and after two/three times I punched in the Google URL and I was fine. I expect that the dilettante user will just stick with Bing and that is why the 10% is there. I absolutely loath the service. Even more so when I'm shotgunned into it.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
"How the fuck do I get Bing to crawl my goddamn site?!"
I just don't get... eh, ugh... never mind. This post wasn't worth the research I put into it.
Faaaaaake! Photoshopped! Where's the blue screening?
I don't know about other people but I actively use bing.... There has been a lot of great deals with microsoft picking up anywhere from 3 to 30% of the bill for buying stuff with bing cash back. Guess what? I have to use bing to search for those deals. Granted I don't buy *that* much and it's probably accounts for less than 3% of my browsing but I wouldn't be surprised if people got it as high as 10%.
Yeah, because Microsoft has always been a monopoly. It's not like they started out in the same place as *nix did or anything.
If you go to the add-ons page with no cookie set (ie default) the first page includes two columns with this exact order:
Left-hand Column
- Bing Search
- Wikipedia Visual Search
- eBay.com Visual Search
- ESPN Search
- Sports Buzz from Buzztap
- Truveo.com Search
Right-hand Column
- New York Times Instant Search
- Amazon Search Suggestions
- Yahoo! Search Suggestions
- Realtime Web Search (by OneRiot)
- Lyrics Search Suggestions
- Instant Visual Search (Surf Canyon)
You will find Google Search Suggestions is the first item on the second page.
With the collection of notable "nothing" search items on the first page there is no question it is intentional.
(Are you sure you aren't using "Sports Buzz from Buzztap" as your default search???)
Okay, seriously. What is the big deal when MS gains 2% over what they had a couple of months ago? 10% to 80% should not be called "significant market share".
For fun, let's compare last year's market share for October to this year's stats:
Search Engine = 2008 / 2009 ( change )
Google = 82% / 78% ( - 4% )
Yahoo = 11% / 11% ( 0 )
Microsoft = 5% / 7% ( +2% )
I gathered the data from enquisite.com, as it's less suspect to tweaking and skewing than Com Score (shown below)
Search Engine = 2008 / 2009 ( change )
Google = 63% / 65% ( +2 )
Yahoo = 20% / 19% ( -1% )
Microsoft = 8% / 9% ( +1% )
Either way, there is little difference between this year's share and last year's. Nothing to even talk about.
Besides all of this, every web developer knows (or should know) that the market share is very different from site to site. On a few of the sites I run, Google's share varies from 80% to 90% (not tech sites, fyi, small town businesses)
I'm calling Troll on this whole article. And, looking up at all the fan boys, it's worked.
I'm not a bird, I'm a super-advanced flying stealth dinosaur!
Bing is hands-down the best porn search engine ever created. If you build it, they will come.
Most people don't even understand the concept of a browser, let alone a search provider.
This is solely because IE8 has bing included.
This 10% is what... the idiots who inadvertently installed the Bing toolbar, set their homepage to Bing.com and don't know how to change it back? I've already reverted my Grandmother's homepage back to Google.
I actually talked to one of the Bing developers about it and it's a pretty slick deal. The retailers give the discounts to the customer in exchange for ad credits on Microsoft's ad network. Although this seems like Microsoft's just taking the hit (in terms of lost ad revenue), this is a pretty smart move, saying that: 1. Retailers would become accustomed to using Microsoft's ad network, and spend more $$ on it vs. Google. 2. Since the ads are on an "auction" model, the prices will be bidded up, resulting in more $$ for Microsoft.
Student Research and Development
I would not be surprised to find out that the Microsoft monopoly is OLDER THAN YOU ARE.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Bing is now the most annoying spam I have to deal with on the internet. An awful lot of sites have those awful green underlines on random words, and up pops Microsoft Bing.
I will avoid using it just because of the annoyance it is causing. It's probably counting a couple of hundred 'searches' from me. I use Google for any real searches I do.
Not only that, If you begrudgingly sign up for Verzion DSL, since there is nothing else in your area, you get Bing installed as your default search when the URL is invalid. So Yes M$ is Pouring the Cash at Bing in many ways.
Now I put Google back, many will not know how and inflate the Bing score, even if the searches are ignored by people that use google by chose.
You know, for once, I think Microsoft has a winner, and a loser at the same time. I really had my doubts about BING, but after convincing myself to be "open minded" and not a Microsoft Jihadist, I started using it a bit, and more and more. I really like it.
However, I think Bing has already reached it's peak. I mean really, Google is a household word. How many times a day do you hear someone say "google it".
I think it was insane for Microsoft to even enter the market with Bing. And I really don't expect it to stay there long.
Reason, like I said, google is imbedded in the mindset of millions and millions of people. It's not going to go away. Hell, it's even a word in the dictionary.
Second, the Microsoft Jihadists who wouldn't use a Microsoft product, if it were the best product available in the world. They just won't. I believe this, too, is imbedded in the mindset of millions of people also.
My prediction is this will be a money pit for MS, and they'll quietly ditch it sooner or later.
J.C.
Go ahead, you can probably blame some of this on me -- and people like me. I was in the market for an XBox 360 Arcade...
I think I've read enough, and agree with your first assessment. :P
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Don't be like Google when you start to tracking people with your free stuffs and those pesky adsense shits. fu/ck google with their dataming