Is Bing The King?

Steve Ballmer, CEO Microsoft revealed the company’s brand new competitor against Google, Bing on May 28, 2009. After Bing went fully online on June 3, 2009, it gained a market share of almost 10 percent within a span of three months. This site is a replacement of Live Search/MSN Search and it has lot more features than its previous version. Intelligently termed as ‘decision engine’, this site offers a lot of easy search methods to users. Bing has been created with all user friendly facilities to topple Google of its number one position. Bing carries a lot of promises for Microsoft. The CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer had introduced Bing to being a site that will help people to use the information they find on their site. According to Ballmer search engines do a good job but not a “very good job”. Thus Bing would not only help people search for information but it would help them to use those informations correctly.

The Power of Bing

Bing is intelligent. It suggests keywords to users related to many categories such as travel, maps, food, science, technology, business etc. It has its search engine made in such a way that it can give smarter results to users understanding their search needs. It gives a top-down search result to the users. Thus the most relevant search link comes to the up and then goes down depending on its relevancy. There are also features like ‘Instant Answers’ and ‘Deep Links’. The Bing Maps are the most interesting part. They almost give a satellite view of the area one is looking for. Its almost virtual earth, very real with really sharp images. There are other features too for e.g. comparisons in hotel rates come in colour thus making it easy for the users to come to a decision quickly.

Now Some Stats

According to statistics, Bing had gained a market share of about 9.3 percent within three months. But recently in September 2009 they experienced a fall in market share. Bing gained during August but it again came down in September. According to StatCounter Bing’s share of US market fell down from 9.54% to 8.51% for the month of September. But this may exclusively be a single. Its market share can easily rise as it is merged with another web giant, Yahoo. But ironically Yahoo’s share too has declined in September. But this can well be a singular case. Bing’s popularity and hits increased during its launch. After it went fully active in June, it instantly gained a market share. In July Bing’s market share went up to 8.9% from 8.4% of the earlier month. This was clearly a share taken away from Yahoo and Google. Thus Bing rose to a commendable market share in three months. But it recently came down. But given to the fact that Microsoft is a giant in the software market, it is not likely to settle down for less. At least if that were to be the case it would have never made this all new, intelligent search engine.

What do you think? Will Bing become the King of search in times to come?