Bing, The Last Stand

Microsoft has struggled and battled to increase their market share in the search engine wars. A measly 8% is what Microsoft has achieved despite the millions of dollars, time & effort, and everything Microsoft has put up in this technology area. It is a fact that the software leader was way too late in recognizing the power of search engines and they have watched and stayed on the sidelines while Google created the buzz, grabbed market share and finally became the leader in the search engine industry.

Microsoft playing catch up, launched their search service through MSN, but after a few years, it didn’t go anywhere.

About 3 years ago, Microsoft rebranded everything into their Live.com offering, hoping that the new name would bring users to Microsoft and snag away users from the Google search engine; but these hopes didn’t materialize and Microsoft has remained below the 10% market share for Search.

The release of Bing saw a lot of excitement primarily because it was new, and refreshing because the background image gave a pleasant look and feel. Forget about the power of the algorithm, forget about the search results, just use it for it's sheer picture goodness.

Since the release of Bing, Microsoft saw its market share increase to 18% for the first few weeks. It would still take 6 months to 1 year to determine whether Microsoft has finally brought some mojo on their Bing service. For Microsoft, this could be their last stand against Google and if they don’t increase their search engine market share, they might just stop pushing this service with the aggressiveness of being a leader someday. They might still maintain the service but on a lower budget, and with lower expectations. Their below 10% market share is not desirable especially for a company as large as Microsoft, nonetheless, the failure of Bing could just wake up the software giant with the realization that search is not their mojo.

Bing has got to grow and sustain their progress, because it could be Microsoft’s last stand.

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