Redmond software giant Microsoft may just be getting started with spending up to $100 million promoting its new Bing search engine, but if the first month of operation is anything to go by, Microsoft may eventually be able to whittle away from of Google’s enormous market share advantage in Internet search. According to media analysis firm StatCounter, Bing has managed to elevate Microsoft’s share of the U.S. Internet search market one point, from 7.21 percent in April to 8.23 percent in June. Much of the gain appears to have come at Google’s expense; according to StatCounter, Google’s share dropped from 79.07 percent in April to 78.48 percent in June.
"At first sight, a 1 percent increase in market share does not appear to be a huge return on the investment Microsoft has made in Bing but the underlying trend appears positive," said StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen, in a statement. "Steady if not spectacular might be the best way to describe performance to date."
According to StatCounter’s weekly trends, Microsoft’s overall search share (across Live Search, MSN Search, and Bing) peaked in Bing’s first week of availability at 9.21 percent; the following two weeks saw declines, but share increased again at the end of June.
Globally, Microsoft also saw gains from Bing’s debut, seeing its share of global Internet search jump from 3.08 percent in April to 3.30 percent in June; however, most of that gain appears to have come at Yahoo’s expense, which saw its global share decline from 5.48 percent to 5.15 percent over the same period. Google almost completely dominates the global search market, with a share of 89.80 percent.
