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Bing Gains 10% Marketshare

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the nowhere-to-go-but-up dept.

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."

17 of 514 comments (clear)

  1. Is it trickery? by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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    1. Re:Is it trickery? by Rogerborg · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And given that, it's astonishing that Microsoft can still only bamboozle 10% of "Darren Defaults" users into eating their dogfood.

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    2. Re:Is it trickery? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Google search is embedded into a hojillion websites as well as having browser plugins / toolbars for pretty much every browser. If "embedded searches" are counted it'll probably be to Google's advantage.

      (I'm not saying that the study isn't trickery. I wouldn't know either way.)

    3. Re:Is it trickery? by jonadab · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > 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?

      Don't be an idiot. This is Bing we're talking about, not Yahoo. Do you really think 10% of people go to it on purpose? Outside of extreme geekdom, nobody's even heard of it yet.

      Basically what this means is IE8 has, mostly as a result of automatic updates, reached about 10% market share among people who think the browser's location bar is a search box and haven't bothered to express an opinion about what search engine it should use. IE8 ships with "Live Search", alias Bing, as the default; IE6 and IE7 used MSN Search as their default, so what we're seeing here is mostly new-version uptake.

      There are also a few geeks using it on purpose to try it out, but even if 100% of the slashdot-reading population did that it wouldn't be anywhere near 1% market share, let alone 10%. And the single most popular search engine among the slashdot-reading geekdom is almost certainly still Google at this point.

      No, the bulk of the 10% we're talking about here consists of people using the IE8 UI.

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    4. Re:Is it trickery? by sopssa · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why would Google publish their marketshare changes? Especially because only way they can go is down, unless they can gain marketshare in China (from Baidu) or Russia (from yandex).

    5. Re:Is it trickery? by poetmatt · · Score: 3, Insightful

      microsoft is making themselves better and more productive? LOL I seriously hope you are joking. Bing is still very skewed to show positive results for things that MS is interested in gaining marketshare from. It's when people realize this, that they start to have less interest in bing. The only reason it has *any* marketshare beyond like 1% is being embedded and defaulted everywhere.

    6. Re:Is it trickery? by jamstar7 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Therefore at least one reason Bing is piece of crap is because of it's evilness!

      Nothing wrong inherently with evil, ya know. Nor is there anything inherently wrong with trying to scam off with Google's lunch. It's called 'business as usual', ya know. I checked Bing out when it first started getting airplay on tv, didn't see what all the excitement was about. IIRC, early results were heavily weighted to shill Microsoft products. Big surprise, eh? Now the recent XP/Vista updates toggle default browser search engines to Bing, Win7 ships with default search engine of Bing, any embedded native Windows search uses Bing, and it's a surprise that Bing picked up 10% of the search engine market? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight...

      Google took years to conquer the market and stomp on Altavista. Microsoft can do it with a click of an update button. Fun, eh? See you Patch Tuesday. And don't forget to click back to Google...

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      Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
    7. Re:Is it trickery? by gilroy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      To say they can't means the market isn't growing, which shows your lack of udnerstanding

      Um, no, I think the lack is on your part. Even a 100% monopoly can gain sales, but they can't increase market share -- that is, the fraction of the market they reach. If the number of searches doubled, and Bing doubles and Google doubled (pretending they're the only two engines), then their market share remains the same, 10% and 90% respectively.

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      The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
    8. Re:Is it trickery? by pHus10n · · Score: 3, Insightful

      See, this is the asshat comments that drive me away from Slashdot. You stated that about Microsoft/Google in a way to present bias --- that MS is evil and Google is not. Microsoft *did* setup Bing to steal users --- that's how a business gets customers in an established area. You don't see McDonald's saying "No, we'll let them have the 30-39 age group" to KFC.

      Google did the exact same thing. Or do you believe that they didn't setup a search engine to steal customers from Yahoo, Altavista, and others just to sell ads?

  2. MSN/Live had about the same market share before by guruevi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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  3. Defaults.... by Dartz-IRL · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?

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    1. Re:Defaults.... by StealthBadger · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Except for the fact that you have to jump through extra hoops AFTER installation to get to Google's entry in the IE8 search provider listing.

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      Searching for Truth, Justice, and the Guy Who Boosted My Wallet a Few Weeks Back....
  4. Amazing what money will buy by WindBourne · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?

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  5. Surprising... by Gription · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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!!!

    1. Re:Surprising... by MrNaz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yea, because Google's idiotic toolbar being bundled with everything from the end user Java VM to Adobe PDF Reader is so different a tactic.

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      I hate printers.
  6. Re:Shocked by Ant+P. · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I find it hilarious that - even with the obvious money-under-the-table bias, even with the fact it's shoved in every IE user's face by default (and the fact changing the default on that is deliberately hard and confusing), they can still only get 10%.

  7. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion