14 DAY TRIAL // While just recently Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was all high and mighty about not needing Microsoft and how their search business was doing just fine on its own, new data from StatCounter should have her at least worried. According to the info Microsoft's new search engine Bing has just surpassed Yahoo to become the second largest in the United States.
“It remains to be seen if Bing falls away after the initial novelty and promotion but at first sight it looks like Microsoft is on to a winner,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. “Steve Ballmer is quoted as saying that he wanted Microsoft to become the second biggest search engine within five years. Following the breakdown in talks to acquire Yahoo! at a cost of $40bn it looks as if he may have just achieved that with Bing much sooner and a lot cheaper than anticipated.”
The latest report from StatCounter, which came on Thursday, shows that Bing has grown to 16.8 percent of the US market, becoming the number two search engine, with Yahoo falling way behind to just 10.22 percent. Meanwhile, Google still dominates with 71.47 percent.
What's more, Bing has overtaken Yahoo globally, albeit by a small margin, with Microsoft's search engine gaining 5.62 percent while Yahoo has 5.13 percent. Google is also king worldwide, with an even bigger advantage, controlling 87.62 percent of the search market.
All the hype and the tens of millions of dollars Microsoft has poured in an all-out campaign promoting Bing must be worth it and it's sure to have Yahoo executives worried. Yahoo has been looking for a buyer for its search business for a few years now as it became clear that it couldn't make much progress against the Mountain View-based company. Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo Search last year but has been rejected, in hopes of a better offer. Since then though there haven't been any suitors and Yahoo's search business continues to lose market share and revenue. It's unclear whether Bing will retain the number two status for long but even if it drops again Microsoft really doesn't have any incentive to try another deal.