Stock market shares do not move in steady curves, they are subject to fluctuations both positive and negative. So recent news that Bing’s incremental gains against Google may have stalled last month might not be reason for despondency on the part of Bing. However, Google will no doubt be welcoming the news. It looked as if users were responding positively to Bing’s novel search, increasing its market share from 5.71% in September 2008 to 9.64% in August of this year. But September showed the first drop in that period, slipping to 8.51% according to StatCounter and NetApplications. Interesting findings, but until other sources such as Compete, ComScore, Hitwise and Nielsen report their stats, it is too soon to draw any major conclusions.
Live Search To Bing
The huge investment that Microsoft has made in Bing since its rebrand from Live Search might have suggested that money can buy you almost anything, but some might say this down turn shows that Bing might be approaching a wall. Once Bing and Yahoo become one, then the Bing brand will command a market share closer to 20%, but until then Bing appears to be introducing every sweetener they can.
Search Engine Technology
Very recently they added a visual search button to their (US) homepage, along with a ‘more’ button. To a lesser degree, Bing seems to be adhering to the ‘continual improvement’ ethos that so dominates Google’s products. Both companies obviously require hugely talented and skilled people in order to advance, but the cash backing also makes a difference in being able to invest in search engine technology. In 2008 Google had a net income of $4.2 Billion dollars, while there are no records of Bing’s income as an individual brand yet. Bing’s colossal parent Microsoft had a net income of $17.6 Billion, and so clearly is the only company with both the money and expertise to mount any real challenge, particularly in light of its partnership with Yahoo. The Bing of the future will be around double the size of Yahoo, but is still likely to flounder by the wayside.
Most would agree that Bing offers a solid search facility. Despite this, and the attractive novelty features such as visual search (and the still-impressive basic image search for non-US users) Bing’s major hurdle is the fact that people know and like Google, and cannot see a good enough reason to switch. A brand that has become a verb itself (Why don’t you Google it?) is going to be hard to dislodge. Bing needs to truly amaze these rather inert and satisfied Googlers. They’ve tried bribery in the form of doubling cash-back rewards for people who buy products via their engine, which has certainly been popular with many shoppers, but moves like this are unlikely to be enough.
Real Time Search
But what seismic shift could they possibly orchestrate? Some say that a search engine that gives truly up-to-the-minute results is what the market needs. Instead of giving you an image of the internet that is essentially about 1 day old, an engine that can tell you what’s happening right now could surely attract huge interest (much like Twitter and Facebook offer a constantly updated vein of social content). If Bing could perfect real time search before Google, then it might be possible for them to make big gains.
But until Bing offers a service that is more unique and useful – and better – than Google currently offers, the old enemy inertia will keep the search crown from Bing’s reach until it can find a trump card.
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