

Microsoft Bing Controls 30% Of Search Market, Google Slowly Sinking  - zuzzo
http://mashable.com/2011/04/11/bing-google-stats/

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Xuzz
I feel a major contributor to this might be the fact that IE uses Bing as the
default search engine, even if it annoyingly prompts you to change it on
initial install. Admittedly, that's not what drives the choices of this corner
of the web, but it might affect the web as a whole, where IE is still (by far)
the dominant browser.

Of those IE users, there's likely a set of people who don't even know there is
something called "Bing" -- they just type into the search field and click on
the results when they come up. They might even think they are "googling" their
search, and as Bing and Google look essentially the same, they won't notice a
difference.

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melling
It's called leveraging your monopoly. 9 out 10 desktops still run Windows.
That's a lot of control. As a company, Microsoft should leverage this right up
to the point where they might run afoul of the EU or US govt. That's just good
business.

~~~
rjbond3rd
Good business would be to build something people would actively seek out, in
my mind. Anything else seems to diminish the brand -- or maybe the point is to
diminish the value of search and the competitor's brand?

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dr_
This is not entirely surprising. If you take Yahoo's share of the market and
add Microsoft's own pre-existing share with Bing, you get to about 30%. The
question is whether or not their share increases any further. My guess is
probably not. It's not that Bing is any less useful than Google - it's just
that it's not really more useful. As such, there isn't much impetus to switch
over.

~~~
chwahoo
I'm a happy Google user, but it's nice to have some choices. Nonetheless, I
agree that Google will probably dominate until something game-changing comes
along.

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emanuer
Google is loosing market share: This is wonderful news, I only hope the data
is correct.

For clarification I love Google. I use 20% of all products they ever made
(which is a lot). I wish them nothing but success. BUT as much as I like
Google, I fear monopolis much more.

I must credit Google for being able to keep their product at such a high
quality level, for such a long time, without any real competition forcing them
to. I don't think there are many other companies in the world who could do the
same.

I just rather don't relay on the goodwill and effectiveness of one single
company for an essential commodity. (Yes I consider online search a
commodity).

I truly hope the article about the impending fail of Bing is an inaccurate
description. Source: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2423054>

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contextfree
Note: the US search market only. Bing's share is much lower worldwide (partly
because it's not fully launched in most countries)

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hanifvirani
I like Bing and I want to use it more often, but I just keep using Google out
of habit. This, no doubt, is the biggest challenge that Bing faces.

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jbri
It's interesting that the article looks at click-through rates for Google and
Bing, and then concludes that Google's lower click-through rate means that
people aren't finding what they're looking for.

Except that for many searches, Google just tells you the result right there
(so you don't even need to click on anything to find it), while Bing does not.
As a quick example, googling "10 meters to feet" tells you, above the results,
that 10 meters = 32.8 feet, while Bing just returns a bunch of sites with
conversion tables.

Which query will have better click-through rates? Which query better helps you
find what you're interested in?

~~~
brg
<http://www.bing.com/search?q=10+meters+to+feet>

Bing does a very good job on such queries.

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ericd
I don't know if I buy this. Yahoo and Bing account for less than 8% of my
sites' search engine traffic. Anyone know how hitwise collects their stats?

~~~
kenjackson
I looked at your products and they're not the Bing demo. Can someone get
Wikipedia data? That I think would be more representative?

