More Consumers Googling With Bing
by John Paczkowski
Posted on August 3, 2009 at 10:53 AM PT
Microsoft’s Bing search service continues to gather momentum, albeit slowly. Bing’s share of the U.S. Internet search market grew one percent in July, rising to 9.41 percent from 8.23 percent in June, according to metrics outfit StatCounter.
Meanwhile, Yahoo (YHOO) and Google (GOOG) lost ground–Yahoo’s share fell to 10.95 percent from 11.04 percent and Google’s to 77.54 percent from 78.48 percent. Together, Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo, thanks to their new alliance, claim 20.36 percent of the search marke. That is still far less than Google’s 77.54 percent, but it’s significant nonetheless given the daunting challenge the search sovereign presents. Said StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen: “Bing continues to make slow but steady progress but the combined Yahoo! figures suggests that the deal announced last week will have to demonstrate major future synergies if it is to make any dent in Google’s dominance.”
Comments
I think it’s a safe bet that Microsoft will put a dent in Google’s search business, if not actually surpassing it at some point.
I’ve always said that “search” doesn’t lend itself to tightly controlled monopoly in the same way that a painful to install or replace operating system does. Maybe at some point the Justice Department, currently snoozing with its head comfortably ensconced in Microsoft’s posterior will wake up to this.
On the other hand, it may simply be another activity on which Microsoft willingly loses money quarter after quarter while other, smaller Internet entities eek out a living under the Microsoft radar. Microsoft’s action often go not so much to making money directly, but to insuring that those who do make money, on software and hardware, are forced to go through the MS toll booth. I see no change here.
When I was doing research for a living one of my favorite tools (who’s name I’ve forgotten) was a Windows application that submitted search strings to a dozen or so search engines, extracted the results “screen scraper” style without the help of APIs and eliminated the need for the user to see ads, or tortured fancy formatting. Just the results ma’am.
Google with its clean interface (and API) made such tools (and Windows) mostly unnecessary, but they could always return, and the burden of housing hundreds of thousands of servers to perform a profitless “public service” of search could return. Hey, maybe we could even have the government take over search. Rather than label Microsoft’s predatory behavior for what it is, simply label Google “too big to fail” and take it over. There seems to be a trend in that direction.
Posted by Mac Beach at August 3rd, 2009 at 11:37 amJohn, you are comparing apples to oranges. comScore’s latest qSearch report reports Yahoo at about 20% of US search market share [1], which has been consistent for at least a year; it is most likely that Ballmer was referring to this report when he made the 20% remark last September.[2] Statcounter has reported Yahoo at about 13% of US search market share up till about March 2009, with decline to about 11% after that.[3]
It is completely inaccurate to imply that Statcounter (or any other market share numbers I am aware of) show a 50% y/o/y decline in search market share for Yahoo.
[1] http://www.comscore.com/Press_.....e_Rankings
[2] http://ir.comscore.com/release.....eid=335556
[3] http://gs.statcounter.com/#sea.....807-200908
Posted by Kevin Akira Lee at August 3rd, 2009 at 12:12 pmI find it hard to believe that the Ask Network is getting used 3.9% on the comscore list.
Where is that comming from?
And more importantly, what search engine does AllThingsDigital use? I type in Dell and the first hit is from 2007. How lame is that!
Posted by Jeff Stevens at August 3rd, 2009 at 12:50 pmThat’s a great point, Kevin. I’ve updated the post accordingly.
Posted by John Paczkowski at August 3rd, 2009 at 1:55 pmJohn – thanks for the update. The unspoken truth about those market share reports is that they can’t be taken at face value. At all the companies I’ve worked at (which includes Yahoo Search in the past), significant effort was required to dig into each of those reports and find out what they really meant.
Jeff – Ask has consistently held to about 4% market share for quite some time. They have maintained good market/brand awareness, even if they aren’t talked about as often as the big three of G/Y/M.
Posted by Kevin Akira Lee at August 3rd, 2009 at 2:53 pm