Is Microsoft's Bing Losing Its Bling?

It’s time for Microsoft (MSFT) to put the champagne back on ice: Bing’s market share gains are starting to evaporate.

StatCounter was the first to dare suggest that Bing was losing its sting, but now new Hitwise data suggests both Bing and Yahoo (YHOO) have lost U.S. audience share in the past month:

At first glance, it looks like Bing has lost 5 percentage points of market share, but the "-5%" represents a 5% decline in its share. It dropped from 16.96% to 16.38% (not 16.96% to 11.96%).

We should note that Ask.com deserves some credit for increasing its search share by 8% (from 2.37% to 2.56%).

Of course, this could be a blip–or perhaps Bing’s earlier growth was the blip–but what’s you take on this reversal of good fortunes?

Comments

[Mad Hedge F...:]

vde You may not be aware of this, but Microsoft (MSFT) is about to hit you with a massive marketing effort to buy its new Windows 7 operating system, which will be officially released on October 22. I have been an early adopter of technology for most of my life, and have been doing my own tech support for 25 years (remember Evelyn?) Do yourself a huge favor and skip it. A number of beta testers have told me that this is the upgrade from Hell. Windows 7 doesn’t explode in your face when you first turn it on, but it comes close to it. If you have the 32 bit version of Vista, which most of you do, then you will only be able to install the 32 bit version of Windows 7, unless you want to go through a tortuous custom install. I shudder at the prospect of hunting down my lost original installation disks, web addresses of download sites, and long forgotten product keys. That defeats the purpose of the upgrade right there, as the 64 bit system was the main oomph behind the new version, enabling you to use more than 3 gb of memory at once. You will need 20 gigs of free disk space for the upgrade, which will put it out of reach of many laptops. If you do somehow get the 64 bit version installed, then many of your peripherals won’t work. If you are one of millions who were too terrified to take on Vista and are still using the antiquated XP operating system, forget it. There is no upgrade. Better to save yourself $120, and wait a year until you buy a new PC with Windows 7 preinstalled on it, with enough extra RAM to take full advantage of its real power. That gives Mr. Softy another year to debug it and come up with a product that really works.

Oct 07 01:36 PM

[jack dee:]

Mad hedge is spamming the same comments on other stories.


this guy does copy and paste spamming the comments, and yet SA puts him as a top twenty.....

It plain Mad Hedge Fund is also posting links to pomote sites, instead of paying for space....

Oct 07 02:10 PM

[Respirate:]

1. Reviews of Win-7 early releases have been overwhelmingly positive.

2. "You will need 20 gigs of free disk space for the upgrade, which will put it out of reach of many laptops." Most modern laptops have ample space to accommodate 20 gb.

3. "... still using the antiquated XP operating system ... ." XP is hardly antiquated, and is preferred by knowledgeable users and businesses to Vista.

4. Mad Hedge's comments begin with a focus on Win-7, but he piles on about what a pain installation is when he can't find installation disks and product keys. Since when is poor housekeeping Microsoft's problem?

Take his advice with a grain of salt. Listen to tech professionals you can trust.

Oct 07 02:30 PM

[makingmoney:]

What does Win7 upgrade have to do with Bing market share?

Oct 08 09:49 AM

[rajsekar:]

Can someone remove this spammer MadHedge? What an idiot. This guy is pasting the same comments on all MSFT related articles.

Oct 08 09:56 AM

[Edward, Lor...:]

XP Pro does just fine. It's not broken (unlike 98) and I won't try to fix it. In fairness I don't play video games and spend my life on facebook or U-tube. We're a law office.

Oct 08 10:35 AM