Technical Tidbits™

From now on I’m going to start certain blog posts with the “I Told U So:” title when I backup something I’ve predicted or have stated as a belief or fact by a 3rd party.  I like the title!

Anyway, in an article titled: Bing Gets Dinged, But The Market-Share Game’s Far From Over, CRN writer Brian Kraemer stated:

Microsoft’s Bing went live on June 3 and is entering its fourth month of competition against Google. In September, Bing lost about 1 percent of market share, with Stat Counter reporting that in the U.S. Microsoft’s search engine owned 8.51 percent of the search engine market, down from 9.64 percent in August. Google, meanwhile, saw its share increase to 80.08 percent in September from 77.83 percent in August.

While Kraemer states that it’s too soon to tell if this really means anything, I have to say that to me, this means a lot!

First, Microsoft pumped a lot of money into stupid ad campaigns for the launch of Bing that did nothing but serve as a constant irritation to viewers with it’s attempt at making the whole world chatter in search results. The noise was deafening and only made me speed past the commercials in my DVR once I saw the first one.

So yes, folks would jump on Bing to check out this new “cat’s meow” and alleged competitor to Google. I mean after all, it was news, right?

Secondly, many of us pundits and researchers (as well as every blogger in the blogosphere) were jumping on Bing to test its metal against our common Google searches.

That would spike the market share considerably!

And as I illustrated in my previous post: Bada Boom, Bada Bing, Bada Bust, Bing is no competitor to Google’s search engine – not by a long shot!

I also believe that Kraemer erroneously uses the Firefox market share against IE as a measure to whether or not Microsoft has to worry about Google.

There are two very distinct differences between Firefox and Google that makes this measurement unrealistic.

1. Firefox is run by the open source community and does not have the advertising dollars to back it like Google.  Firefox’s advancements are all a grass roots campaign which would of course, take longer to compete. The fact that they are holding the second position against IE is a statement to just how powerful the open source community can be!

2. Comparing a search engine market share to a browsers market share is like comparing apples and oranges.  There are too many variables that could explain the differences.

Additionally, one of the reasons for the slow adoption of Firefox is the fact that many major business websites were slow in adopting compatibility for Firefox. I remember not more than a year ago, when I couldn’t use Firefox on my bank site, my options trading site, and even my horoscope reading site!

I still stand by my original statement that Bing is no competitor to Google and now that Yahoo has jumped in bed with Microsoft, it’s gone down the tubes itself – and not the YouTube!

So, I’m sure after Kraemer’s adequate time has elapsed (like another month as far as I’m concerned), you will find Microsoft Bing losing even more and even getting lost in the blogosphere as even being newsworthy!

But in the meantime, I TOLD U SO!

Debbie

P.S. If you’ve used Bing and like or dislike it, please comment! I’d love to hear others take on this issue!