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Bing Becomes No.2 Search Engine at 4.37%

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the now-that's-a-gap dept.

suraj.sun writes "Bing overtook Yahoo for the first time worldwide in January, and increased its lead in February, according to web analytics company, StatCounter. Its research arm StatCounter Global Stats finds that globally Bing reached 4.37%, in February ahead of Yahoo! at 3.93%. Both trail far behind Google's 89.94% of the global search engine market." Just a little more plagiarizing to go!

22 of 366 comments (clear)

  1. Excellent! by swordgeek · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Now if only it didn't suck.

    I wish someone - even Microsoft - would come up with a decent alternative to Google. Being a monopoly is making them more and more corrupt, and by being the gatekeeper, they now own too much of the internet.

    --

    "People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
    1. Re:Excellent! by suprcvic · · Score: 5, Insightful

      By definition, Google isn't a monopoly. They aren't the only search engine in town, they just happen to be the most successful with a vast majority of the market share. That's not because they are erecting large barriers to entry, it's just because the other search engines aren't as smart as theirs.

    2. Re:Excellent! by swordgeek · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They are a near-monopoly. Erecting barriers to entry isn't a sign of a monopoly either, it's a sign of a monopoly that is unfairly using its position/power. (In fact, in most of the western world, anti-monopoly legislation doesn't prevent monopolies, it only prevents them from misusing their monopolistic power.)

      But regardless, it's the lack of a better (or comparable and competing) search engine that I lament.

      --

      "People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
    3. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, it's not. Google has not engaged in any anticompetitive practices to hold on to that market share. Being successful simply because you're good at what you do is not a crime. Microsofts agreements with OEMs, other software makers and Intel were used to make it impossible for other OS makers to compete. It would be like if Google created a new standard called norobotsexceptgoogles.txt and lowered the page rank of any sites that didn't refuse to be crawled by anyone but google.

    4. Re:Excellent! by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 4, Funny

      Oblg.: Bing Is No Good. :-)

    5. Re:Excellent! by Nadaka · · Score: 3, Interesting

      1: You don't have to be anti-competitive to be a monopoly. You just have to be significantly larger than your nearest rival.

      2: Drastically undercutting your opponents prices in a new market by leveraging profits from a different market to support it can be seen as anti-competitive. Many for profit vendors see google pushing open source products as this.

    6. Re:Excellent! by Raenex · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Even when Microsoft was at the top of it's position in the 90s, it didn't have exclusive control. You could always get a Mac or use Linux.

      If I decide I'm tired of Google, I can at no cost and with no limitations switch to yahoo, or Bing or one of the other engines out there. There is no cost to the customer, there are no restrictions in choosing to use other options that are equally free.

      As has been pointed out on Slashdot before, you aren't the customer. You are what is being sold to advertisers. The advertisers are the Google's customers, and from their point of view, if they want to pay for search engine advertisements, Google is the monopoly equivalent of Microsoft.

      I was actually shocked when I read the headline. I knew Google was popular, but the number two position is only at 4%? Wow.

  2. Editing is a lost art by Anarke_Incarnate · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Has overtook Bing"

    Cringe..... Maybe they should BING the word overtaken.

    1. Re:Editing is a lost art by slim · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yes, I think it's well wrote as well.

  3. How many by choice? by stcdm33 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How many of those are by choice and how many are by devices and/or apps that have Bing forced on them?

    1. Re:How many by choice? by Alioth · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Where I live, all the goverment employees computers are set to use Bing in the IE search box (and this cannot be changed, it is enforced by group policy) because Microsoft gave the government a discount if they made all government employees use Bing on their work machines.

      Of course government employees can type in "google.com" into the address bar and use Google (or whoever else) if they wish, but I would imagine most just enter things into the search bar.

      --
      Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
  4. Overtook? by NitroWolf · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Overtook? Really? Why do we have editors? Why not just vote on the news items that get posted, since the editors apparently are incapable of doing their job. On top of that, the whole first sentence is a complete mess, not to mention the rest of the summary. Did a 5th grader write it?

    Maybe the submitter should have plagiarized someone competent in grammar and spelling.

  5. Double-surprise by Toe,+The · · Score: 5, Funny

    Which is more surprising? That 4.37% can land a #2 spot, or that anyone uses Bing?

    Both are rather startling, imho.

  6. Yahoo = Bing by cforciea · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Since Yahoo is powered by Bing, isn't this a little like saying Bing has "overtook" Bing?

    1. Re:Yahoo = Bing by owlstead · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yeah, so now we know the number of people too lazy to change their default search engine :)

  7. wow by markass530 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Considering it's the default search engine on I.E. and we all know how loathe people are to change defaults (IE6 market share anyone) this is a pretty sad number.

  8. Bing = Google by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Since Bing is getting data from Google doesn't that make Google 94.31%?

  9. Baidu by Stargoat · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The fact that this article does not mention Baidu makes me very suspicious. Its information is fallacious.

    --
    Hoist Number One and Number Six.
  10. The Irony by ShavedOrangutan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The company that brought us Windows Search and Sharepoint has started an internet search engine.

    No thanks.

    --
    Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
  11. Google alternative: duckduckgo by lrnj · · Score: 3, Informative

    I wish someone - even Microsoft - would come up with a decent alternative to Google.

    I've switched recently from google to DuckDuckGo. I'd call it a decent alternative with a few advantages over Google, and a few disadvantages.

    All in all, I consider it a slight downgrade, but google was starting to creep me out too much.

    --
    Learn Japanese RPG -- lrnj.com
  12. Pyrrhic Victory by l0ungeb0y · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How many tens of millions of dollars in development hours and PR efforts has this cost them? And for what? To say they are a bit better than Yahoo which is quite literally a zombie?

    Once again, Microsoft makes much hyperbole about obtaining dominance, rolls out it's big new weapon of terror, fires it's salvo and calls it a victory when it manages to only barely scratch the armor of it's target.

    Oh how the mighty have fallen.

  13. Where are they getting their numbers? by Animats · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ComScore reports search engine market share for the US each month. They report, for January 2011:

    • Google: 66.6%, down 1% since last month.
    • Yahoo: 16.1%, up 0.1%.
    • Microsoft: 13.1%, up 1.1%.
    • Ask: 3.4%, down 0.1%.
    • AOL: 1.7%, down 0.2%.

    Yahoo is just reselling Bing now. Yahoo no longer has a search engine. So Bing's total is 29.2%. The US market has been split about like that for the last several years - Google with 2/3 of the market, Microsoft + Yahoo with 1/3, and the rest nowhere.

    Outside the US, Google is dominant in most countries other than China (Baidu) and Russia (Yandex).