Microsoft wishes it could be a Google number two

Microsoft's hopeless pursuit to become the world's biggest search giant took a blow from an unlikely source yesterday. The company's senior online audience biz veep Yusuf Mehdi confessed that once Microsoft closes its Yahoo! ad deal, the vendor will - by default - become "a credible number two," in that market. He told …

[Anonymous Coward]

load of old wazzock

Seriously, does anyone ever takes these stats, err, well, seriously? My own stats show a completely different story about peoples search habits and which engines they use. Of which 7% come from Yahoo and Bing combined.

You can rest assured that 98% of the web savvy western world use Google, the ROTW i.e the elderly, the under 7's and those that have been forced to use it through other means where Google may not be available, use Yahoo/Bing as it is there to be used. Does marketing to the elderly, below 7's and computer stoopid sound like it will make good use of your marketing budget?

Nope- The figures are meaningless and MS are up sh|t creek and praying to some dead god for a miracle if they think their interpreted 30% might turn them a profit.

Face it MS, you lost the search wars, time to concentrate on your O/S.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re:Stats

Yes, people do take these stats seriously. THEY are from thousands of sites, showing a cross section of subjects and audiences. Yes, certain sites may get more from one search engine or another, but the whole point of this wide sample statistics is they don't take one person/sites perspective. Therefore, to be honest these stats are massively more important than your own sites stats.

Furthermore, Google had better pray that MS/Yahoo have 30% of the market, else they are in for a serious pounding from anti-monopoly groups globally if they've got the 93% market share you're reckoning upon.

[SilverWave]

Its only Abusive Monopolies that get into trouble.

As long as Google don't abuse their monopoly position they are in the clear.

[Anonymous Coward]

Credible number two

Microsoft already remind most of us of a "number two", so what's changed?

[Paul_Murphy]

All they have to do is..

No evil.

Honestly if people actually were willing to believe that Microsoft was a fair company I'm sure that they would get more traffic, but it seems that people trust them a LOT less than they trust Google (at the moment anyway) and who can really blame them - after all Microsoft have gone out of their way to become the 900lb ogre of the computer business.

Shame that Google is going the same way it seems.

ttfn

[Anonymous Coward]

Deluded

"The nice thing is we can say [to advertisers] you can be close to 30 per cent share in one easy buy. That 30 per cent carries a lot of weight in the marketplace."

As an advertiser I'd have to ask why I would do that when with 'one easy buy' I could get 67.5% (or whatever the figure is), sorry you'll have to try much harder than that to convince me.

Perhaps they need a better sales force. If that's all you can come up with as a reason to buy then you are in the wrong job.'

[Anonymous Coward]

Porn Search?

Yes, but I kinda like their Porn Search Engine (i.e. Bing).

It's far from perfect I know, but perhaps they [Microsoft] would be willing to invest some more Cash into that.

For other stuff Mp3, Torrent, Linux(y) stuff, I use Google.

But for Porn ya just can't ask for a better Search Engine then Bing!!

[Richard Porter]

30%?

The trouble with that estimate is that Yahoo! customers may switch to Google instead of Frank or Dean or whatever the Micro$oft thingy is called.

[G_C]

Indeed...

My thoughts exactly... they can't buy what or where someone chooses to type something...

They're banking on 100% retainability whereas in reality (well in my thoughts at least) they will see a dip and a migration away when they start 'messing' with the peoples choices...

[Magnus_Pym]

Of Course?

'Of course once Microsoft has scooped up Yahoo!'s troubled search estate, the company will quickly lose most of the 17.3 per cent share by a combination of poor understanding of the market and an anti Microsoft bitterness engendered by contact with previous products and services.'

There. Fixed it for Ya.

[Terry 13]

Tools

Any user of the advertising tools provided by Microsoft will tell you they are vastly inferior to those provided by Google. Complete muppetry by Microsoft. The tools feel like they have been written by a couple of clueless graduates to me.

One of the reasons Microsoft succeeded in the OS space was because they paid attention to the needs of developers. The search equivalent is advertisers and what was provided was pants in comparison to Google.

I hate the Google search monopoly but Microsoft is not going to succeed like this. Okay, it might have improved in the nine months since I last looked, but the fact that I've spent thousands on search advertising in the meantime says it all.

Oh, I just went for a look, and adCenter (crap name too) won't support my browser of choice. Talk about turning away customers. Brilliant!

[1of10]

number two? probably number two minus

What number two? Do searchers switch between searching on number one to number two ever?

Searching for a specific word on google... it takes 1 second and the link for correct site near the top of the 1st page

Searching for same specific word on Bin(g removed) ... it takes over 3 seconds and the link for correct site appears on 4th page.

It must have been my XPpro that doesn't like to search on Microsoft services or then is "Bin" that is too slow and shows what I'm not interested to see... So a fail to me with no return...

Google rules the search kingdom and M$ has to do better if they really want some credibility to become even number two.

[Doug Bostrom]

Take it to the bank

""There's no question we intend to make a profit.'"

Just in case there was some doubt about the fundamental nature of the company, he wanted to clear that up.

Somebody needs to help this fellow.

[konstructa]

What?

"Honestly if people actually were willing to believe that Microsoft was a fair company I'm sure that they would get more traffic, but it seems that people trust them a LOT less than they trust Google (at the moment anyway) and who can really blame them - after all Microsoft have gone out of their way to become the 900lb ogre of the computer business."

LoL ..So because you don't trust Microsoft you give your complete online life to Google. Google goes out of it's way to gain personal information. I like Google but it's nuts when you think out their whole "push to the cloud " is just another way to get companies information. Bing is good and the world needs another search company.

"If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place".

-Google CEO Erick Schmidt

[Philip Hands]

duckduckgo.com

No idea what their percentage is (tiny, I'd guess) but they seem to do a pretty good job with the results, and they're not tracking you in order to target results, unlike Google.

I particularly like the fact that they do an excerpt of the wikipedia page and a link to a project's official site as the first couple of hits, when appropriate.

[gimbal]

So they're doing it for the stockholder?

And they admit that, openly,as their primary objective? How noble a goal, from that multi-market technology firm - or is that just their marketing front, speaking? Do they have any other side than for marketing, then? So many questions...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bing is King

I have been using Bing since it came out in June 2009, and it's much better than Google. I will never use Google again. Bing FTW.

[ForthIsNotDead]

Bing Bong

Been using Bing for about a month now. I installed it as the default in Firefox.

I like it. Don't miss google at all.

Give it a try... you might like it too.

There's always http://www.cuil.com/ too!

There's other options than Google, that's all I'm saying! Don't conform! Resist! Revolt now!

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is no longer the darling

Yes, Google is top for search. However, partners who do business with Google are not happy (e.g. Apple) with their arrogant bullying attitude. If Bing is configured as a default seach engine for users on PCs, mobile phones etc. market share will rapidly increase... That said, Microsoft held the top spot for bullying to date !

[Snert Lee]

Subsidized

So that means what part of a Windows license goes toward improving (subsidizing) Microsoft's search ranking?