“If the last two months should be interpreted as Microsoft suggests, with Bing’s gradual ascent in usage share against Google as a sign of Bing’s inevitably catching up, then a similar interpretation of September’s numbers from live analytics firm StatCounter should be taken as a sign of Bing’s ultimate demise. A sampling of five billion or more US page views from Web sites accessed by StatCounter in September reveals that, of the world’s top three search services, Google’s usage share has climbed back just above 80%, and is flirting with last November’s peak of 81.14% — meaning Google is back to serving four out of five US-based general queries. Bing’s usage share in the US descended by 1.13% to 8.51% for the month of September, while Yahoo’s dove 1.1% to 9.4%. Google’s share among the top three has now climbed above where it stood in May (78.72%), when Microsoft changed the name of Windows Live Search.”
But I’ve always enjoyed those times when Microsoft speaks out for a technology of theirs or against someone else’s …. and then a few months later they get proven wrong.
They always seem to quick to praise things without really letting time get on their side. Within two months of Bing they were already saying “the people have spoken” and “we’re on our way up”. Should have waited just a few more months!
Bing only got where it was because of the massive brand-hammer coming down. They’ve changed *every* search box in every site and product of theirs to point to Bing. Live, HoTMaiL, Messenger, MSDN/Microsoft.com—_everything_.
Only a handful of tech reviewers actually *used* Bing, the rest were 301’s coming in from other large areas of unsuspecting users.
I tell you now, it won’t be long until it’s renamed Bing Mail. Watch this space.
Let me guess, that hammer coming down is creating the noice: bing, bing, bing. 😉
… way of estimating market share and, frankly, I don’t welcome Google dominance because (a) it artificially sets advertising rates higher than they would be with other competitors in the market, and (b) Microsoft is actually doing some pretty innovative work with Bing 2.0 that seems to go beyond a lot of what Google is doing. Haven’t we all learned this lesson: Competition=good. Monopolies=bad.
How so? I’m not disagreeing with you, but just curious. Bing seems to me like MS trying to fix something that isn’t broken. It’s like Google has gotten huge, so MS wants to piss in their pool. I mean, is there a problem with Google that MS is trying to solve, or is it just MS wanting a piece of the search pie?
I completely agree. That’s why Microsoft should go to hell. That’s why anybody that has a clue about IT should fight Microsoft. I mean Joe SixPack goes to the store and buys a computer. That happens to be preloaded with Windows. OK, he has no clue about operating systems. But everybody else should fight Microsoft until it gets bellow 50% market share. I give Google credit for creating Android because it is based on Linux. And I’ll wait and see how their ChromeOS project pans out. If Google manages to make Linux popular, then I am willing to forgive them for their search dominance. It doesn’t really bother me that Google charges more for ads but I am upset when I try to buy a laptop and I have to spend extra energy to avoid the Microsoft tax.
Market share is not the problem, i can be perfectly happy with a 100% market share with windows. The problem is I am forced to use windows in many circumstances, and I am not using it because it’s a superior product.
People should be promoting open standards and let the best man win. I even think this should be enforced by law, because a vendor lockin is really easy with a proprietary format. This leads to anti-competitive behavior which is as far as i know illegal.
Google and Bing is a different story since i can switch at any time i please with little impact.
That is MS’ intended use, isn’t it?
Bing looks like a friggin’ Netster squatter site, and that “b” icon looks ridiculous.
This is how long it took for the naive users to figure out how to reset IE8 default search to Google.
While I still strongly prefer Google, Bing does seem to give pretty good (sometimes better) results, which is surprising since Google has my search history to go off of. OTOH, Microsoft is having to penetrate a market where the competitor’s product name is basically synonymous with the action. It’s quite similar to what Firefox and Macintosh dealt with, and Linux is currently dealing with. Microsoft will likely either need to sink tons of money into marketing or tons into development since I doubt they’ll make much headway unless the common computer user perceives Bing to be significantly better than Google.
BTW, there’s a typo in the summary that was copy/pasted from the linked article. The phrase “while Yahoo’s dove 1.1% to 9.4%” makes no sense. It seems to originate from the original article, which states “Yahoo! which also declined, to 9.40% from 10.50%”. The author of the linked article apparently moved the decimal place, then rounded. Not realizing his/her mistake the author then forgot the meaning of the word “from” and described the reduction as a “dive” when it’s really more of a “decimation” if a 10% reduction needs emphasis. I’m not sure why the author didn’t notice the misplaced decimal, a mass exodus (90%) of Yahoo!’s user base would be a far more significant story if it were true.
The decrease itself wasn’t 1.1% of the marketshare, but rather the marketshare value went down 1.1 units, where the units are percents.
Umm..those 2 phrases say the exact same thing, with no misplaced decimal points. “dove 1.1% to 9.4%” in standard English would mean that it went from 10.5% to 9.4%, which is exactly what the article states, and is meant by the phrase “Yahoo! which also declined, to 9.40% from 10.50%”. Unless you know another form of English? Maybe the phrases mean different things in British versus American English? That of course is quite possible. I am going off of American English.
Didn’t take long to figure out the original meaning of the sentence, but it didn’t read smoothly and should have been more concise:
“…Yahoo’s dove 1.1%, from 10.50% to 9.40%.
I tried Bing once and it didn’t give me the links I needed. I’ve never used it since, if Google ever went down(very unlikely) and I really needed to look for something on the internet I would rater us Ask than Bing(Yahoo).
“Goog” and “Bing” are just another passing internet fad.
AskJeeves will rise again!
“Google” and “Bing” are just another passing internet fad.
Like pockets…pockets…sheesh.
And pants!
Don’t forget to zip up your pants, the crawlers might get in…
Bah! Webcrawler FTW!