Where is Bing headed?
Search engines and Google seem to have become synonymous for us. The number do peak for themselves as Google has over 81% market share in Desktops/laptops and over 96% in mobiles, bringing Google’s overall market share to over 92.02%. Given the dominance of the android OS and the untimely demise of the windows OS, it does make sense that Google is the unchallenged leader when it comes to mobiles. Bing has around 2.55% market share globally as of July,2017. This might seem to be very small but let’s crunch the numbers. With over 6.6 billion searches every day, even a measly 2.55% market share accounts for more than 167 million searches per day. However, the accuracy of this data should be taken with a pinch of salt as these numbers are an estimated guess and based on which data source one is using, this might vary drastically.
Bing’s earlier iterations were known by many names like Live search, MSN Search, Windows Live Search, etc. Bing was launched on May,28,2009 to unseat Google from its throne as the market leader in search engines. Bing was distinct from its predecessor in the way that it was inspired by Google’s clean and minimalistic outlook keeping in mind that being a search engine was its primary objective. The Microsoft-Yahoo deal which saw Bing power Yahoo! Search seemed a deal breaker for Bing but the gradual demise of Yahoo! Search made it irrelevant, combined with the fact that alteration of the deal in 2015, leading Yahoo! to only using Bing for a majority of its searches. By the end of 2015, Bing has over 20% market share in the US and Yahoo!, which was majorly powered by Bing had over 12%. It had been a long road but Bing did make a dent on Google.
Fast-forward it to 2017, Bing is barely surviving with 2.55% market share. It took Bing over 6 years and overcoming numerous obstacles but less than 2 years to be on the brink fighting for survival. Let’s try and analyze what really caused it.
- Android killed the rest: Windows OS was never close to challenging Android but it had its share of loyal users. What actually hurt Bing most was the death of Blackberry OS which most was reliant on Bing as its search engine (Microsoft-Verizon deal). This left the mobile OS market a near monopoly with Android at the throne and coupled with the fact that the world is moving from desktops/laptops to mobiles for everyday searches, has made Google the default choice (the only one in most cases). As long as Android is at the top, Google will remain the dominant search engine for mobiles. The way Google search is integrated into Android makes it near impossible for Bing to put up any competition.
- Demise of Yahoo!: Bing powered Yahoo! and with the demise of Yahoo!’s market share resulted in loss for Bing. Yahoo!, once an important player in the search engine market is currently lagging behind Bing, who themselves are fighting for survival.
- Search Engines do not exist in isolation: The reason people use Google is not because it is better than Bing but it integrates well with the rest of the factors- the google homepage allows you to access mail, news, drive, office tools. But then again doesn’t Bing provide the same sort of features, if not more- it would work if people preferred Outlook over Gmail. As long as Google maintains its position as the preferred option for mail, online office tools and the rest, Bing can but remain a distant second.
So, is there a silver lining for Bing anywhere? Bing is well integrated in the Windows 10 environment and given, Windows position in desktop/laptop systems Bing has a market share of 5.13%. The Bing Network is actually reported to make up nearly 33% of the U.S. PC search market and is present in 36 countries. Cortana is powered by Bing and if Cortana ends up being successful, that might be the trick to make Bing relevant in future.
The 2.55% market share might seem minuscule but it’s a misleading number in a way, as Bing also powers Yahoo!, Siri, Spotlight, and AOL Search. Siri might be Bing’s only hope in the mobile market but even then, Bing would be working in anonymity as how many people even know that Bing is the default search engine for Siri.
The one conclusion we can come all agree upon is that Bing cannot survive solely on Microsoft’ platforms. Bing needs to form strategic alliances with others to survive in the mobile market as every day the mobile search percentage is increasing.