Is Microsoft Against the Same Thing Linux Is Against in the Desktop Market?

      by Wyatt Walter

Microsoft’s new interface to Live Search, called Bing, seems to be taking off nicely for them. Their ad campaign has created quite a stir and they snagged a pretty good chunk of the search market share within the first few days of its launch. Computerworld reports that Bing accounted for roughly 16% of the search market share in the U.S. with Google accounting for 71% and Yahoo coming in with 10%. Globally, Google controls a much larger share of the market space with over 87% with both Microsoft and Yahoo bringing in barely over 5%.

The question is, can Bing hold up in the long run? Microsoft has been pouring money into advertising and creating hype around Bing so the launch better show some serious results. We’ve already seen an amount of money that Microsoft is willing to throw at the search market in its $40 billion offer to buyout Yahoo!, so I’m sure that this barrage on Google will keep up for a long time, but how much of the search activity is real and how much is because Bing is new? Personally, I used Bing for a day or two while it was new to see what it was like. However, except for the search suggestions at the side, Bing really had nothing to offer me and I went back to Google.

Just like Linux distributions trying to get into the desktop market, users tend to stick with what they are comfortable with. Yes, I’m a Linux fan and do think that Linux offers a superior product. I don’t necessarily think that this is the same case for Bing in the search market, but this is a problem that Bing is going to face. After trying out Bing and finding that it wasn’t as drastically different than Microsoft said it was going to be, I went back. Why? Because I’m comfortable with Google. I like Google’s interface better. Does Google have a better product? Perhaps. Just like when people hear ‘PC’ they think ‘Windows’, when people hear ’search’ they think ‘Google’.

Of course, only time will tell but I wouldn’t expect to see this influx of market share for long for Bing. It’s going to be a long road to success for Microsoft if they want to take the search market. For now we can expect big things as its Ballmer’s pet project and seems to have a nearly infinite amount of resources. As time goes on, Bing will need to be able to sustain itself to be a viable product so Microsoft can devote those resources to R&D to add value to the user experience rather than using it to create hype.

Related Posts Related Websites

Tags: , ,
Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Jun 9th, 2009

Leave a Reply