Microsoft search, now a toddler, breaks into share double digits
Microsoft search experts told reporters today that Bing, now with a big “1” plopped onto its birthday cake, has now reached double-digit market share in the U.S., is coming to Android and continues to innovate.
And “Bing” as a verb? Still working on it.
While Microsoft’s Worldwide Partnership Conference 2010 continues in Washington, D.C., the Bing brain trust was in San Francisco presenting tech reporters with a progress report on the Bing search engine and it’s ambitions to be competitive with search giant Google. While this blog reported humiliating numbers from Netmarketshare that Bing earned just 3.39 percent search market share globally, to Google’s 85 percent, Microsoft presented fresh numbers from comScore that, while still showing an imbalance, are more encouraging for Bing.
ComScore reported today that in the U.S., Bing held a 12.7 percent share of the search market to Google’s 62.6 percent. Yahoo squeezed in between the two at 18.9 percent.
Microsoft argues, fairly so, that the U.S. numbers are more indicative of Bing’s potential because it isn’t available globally. Beyond the U.S. Bing is available in only Australia, Canada, Japan and the U.K.
But the Microsoft people spun a few other figures to illustrate Bing’s traction: Its market share grew by 4.7 points over the last 12 months while Yahoo’s slipped 2.2 points and Google’s slipped by — gasp — two-thirds of a point. The number of unique users on Bing grew by 27 percent over the year to 91 million, from 71.7 million. Microsoft audience research revealed that 33 percent of consumers perceive of Bing as a “decision engine,” meaning its marketing message has gotten through thanks to Bing’s TV ads reimagining scenes from films such as “Easy Rider” and “Thelma and Louise.”
“Anyway you look at it, this is momentum,” said Satya Nadella, senior vice president of Microsoft’s online services division, who quickly added, “But don’t be confused, we are a very low share player. We realize it’s a very long road.”
It’s strategy to continue that momentum is to innovate. At the half-day session for reporters, other members of the Bing team demonstrated features that have been added to Bing of late or are about to be added. Bing aims to move search from merely understanding the search query to understanding the searcher’s intent, said Harry Shum, corporate vice president of online services. Shum spoke of a search “dialog” with the user, quickly trying to gauge intent. When someone enters the words “Book of Eli,” tabs immediately appear below the search box with terms like “Review,” “Showtimes,” “Web” and “News” related to the recent Denzel Washington film. When someone enters “Toyo…” Bing surmises they might be looking up Toyota. Better yet, when they subsequently enter “cam…,” Bing guesses they might be searching for “Camry,” a Toyota model. “[Bing] is history aware,” Shum said.
Microsoft also hopes to build on momentum for Bing on mobile platforms. Already, there are 23 million unique users of Bing mobile on Windows Mobile and RIM BlackBerry and there have been 4.3 million downloads of it on Apple iPhones. Next is Google’s Android, though the most specific Nadella could be about availability was “in the next couple of months.”
Blaise Aguera y Arcas, the architect of Bing Maps, displayed several cool new features. Zoom in on a map of Seattle looking for the zoo and the Bing map transitions into a zoo map showing where the lion, tiger and bear displays are. Microsoft also released a software development kit at its Tech-Ed event in New Orleans last month inviting software creators to come up with map-related apps.
But alas, Bing has a while to go before it will become profitable — Nadella admitted, without much detail — and before it earns the coveted Google honor of being a verb.
The panel admitted evidence of “to bing” entering the language — as in “I binged ‘Lady Gaga’ and she’s playing the Oracle Arena” — is so far only anecdotal. “I heard it in a Pepsi commercial,” offered Brian MacDonald, another member of the Bing team.
Shum said Bing’s best hope is in mobile texting because “Bing is just four characters and Google is six.”
