Microsoft Bing Controls 30% Of Search Market, Google Slowly Sinking | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Bing Controls 30% Of Search Market, Google Slowly Sinking

mashable.com

36 pointszuzzo15 comments

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.

Given that IE has always pushed Microsoft's search engine (previously Live Search, and previously to that MSN search), the logic here appears to be flawed. If anything, Microsoft has been giving users more options to switch their search engine in IE.

On the other hand, there is this data: http://www.techspot.com/news/43155-users-with-newer-ie-versi...

If you're too lazy to read the article, it suggests that newer versions of IE have more Bing usage, despite the fact that they let you switch your default search engine.

It seems that there are more IE users that previously did not use a default search engine and when they upgrade their browser, they end up using Bing because Microsoft sets it as the default.

That article marks an important change in IE9: it no longer asks what search engine you want to use on first run (aka a new install or a new computer, not a browser upgrade), it defaults to bing without asking.

I think that's just unfortunate, though, and not a likely explanation of any change in search market share (IE9 has only been out for a month, after all).

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.

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?

I'm going to guess it has more to do with the deal Microsoft made with Verizon to ensure their phones used Bing instead of Google. And with the large amount of Android phones being sold with Bing, this will inevitably eat into the market share. This could also explain why Andy Rubin now wants oversight of customised Android distributions.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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

Bing does a very good job on such queries.

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?

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

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