Microsoft’s Bing May Have Google Cofounder Worried
Does Bing have Google shaking in its boots? Google may indeed be concerned about Microsoft’s breakout Bing launch, analysts said.
According to the New York Post, Google cofounder Sergey Brin is so rattled by the rival search engine that he has assembled a team of top engineers to work on urgent updates to the site. The Post also reported that Brin himself is leading the team to determine how Bing serves up its results.
“I do think Google is taking Bing very seriously,” said Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. “According to the early traffic indications, there has been some bump for Bing.”
Bing’s Bump
Microsoft launched Bing about two weeks ago and is sinking between $80 million to $100 million to market its so-called decision engine. The early results are impressive.
Microsoft increased its average daily penetration among U.S. searchers from 13.8 percent during May 26-30 to 15.5 percent during June 2-6, according to comScore. The research firm concluded this is an indication that the search engine is reaching more people than before. Microsoft’s share of search-result pages in the U.S., a proxy for overall search intensity, increased from 9.1 percent to 11.1 percent during the same time frame.
Meanwhile, StatCounter is reporting that Bing has overtaken Yahoo to secure the number-two spot in the search market. StatCounter said Bing grabbed market share from Google. StatCounter’s analysis reveals that in the U.S., Bing leapfrogged Yahoo to take second place with 16.28 percent. Yahoo had 10.22 percent. Google still dominates the U.S. search market with 71.47 percent.
In the U.S., Bing ranked 17th out of more than 450,000 Web sites, up from 5,120 the week before the official launch when the Web site was merely a placeholder, according to Hitwise. Within the search-engines category, Bing ranked fourth out of the search engines tracked by Hitwise.
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