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Comment by Xuzz | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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).

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