Early gains do not guarantee a long-term increase in search market share, and thanks to its experience with Live Search and Live Search Cashback, Microsoft knows this better than anyone. That said, Redmond’s new search engine, Bing, does seem to be making some solid progress.
What’s in a name? Apparently, the answer to Microsoft’s many search problems. As we previously reported, the software behemoth plans to debut its new search service at our D: All Things Digital conference later this week, and when it does it may have a new name. Reports claim that Microsoft Live Search, once known as Windows Live Search, and prior to that as MSN Search, will henceforth be known as… Bing.
Yahoo claimed 20.6 percent of all U.S. search queries in February, according to comScore. A year from now it will claim just 17.51 percent or less, its share gutted by the loss of deals that once made Yahoo’s the default search toolbar on new HP and Acer PCs.
Who got those deals? Microsoft and Google, of course.
With Microsoft’s February share of the search market weighing in at a paltry 8.2 percent and declining, the company is going to extraordinary lengths to reverse the public’s indifference to its search offering. It tried loyalty programs. It tried rewards programs. Now, as it prepares to rebrand its search engine under a new name–Kumo–it’s turning to a more proven method: an $80 million to $100 million advertising campaign.
With Yahoo now just a collapsed and trembling form dwindling in Microsoft’s rearview mirror, the software giant has been anxiously searching out other ways to accelerate its stalled search business. And now it appears to have found one. On Thursday afternoon, Microsoft said it is expanding its relationship with Facebook to bring its Live search and search ads to the social-networking site.
Google accounted for 77.4 percent of all search engine spending in the second quarter of 2008. This according to Efficient Frontier which notes that Google claims $1.10 of every new search dollar.
How is that possible? Because advertisers are putting their new advertising dollars with Google (GOOG) and pulling some of their old ones away from the company’s rivals.
My God … Bill Gates really is sharing his fortune. But not with folks who help out with that infamous Microsoft email “beta test.” He’s sharing it with consumers who use Microsoft’s Live Search engine to find and purchase products online.
They’re not the competition; they’re the environment in which you compete. The IT industry used to say that about IBM, but today the adage seems equally applicable to Google, which dominates the search market just as IBM once dominated the computer industry. According to new metrics from Hitwise, Google’s share of the U.S. Internet search market grew to 67.9%–a 4% increase year-over-year.
With the details of planned changes to Microsoft’s Live Search already revealed by a hapless product manager a few days back, the most interesting things coming out of Microsoft Searchification Day 2007 today are the metrics.
Citing independent statistics, Microsoft claims Live Search has 70 million users per month and reaches 38% of all search-engine users. [...]
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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