Bing now captures 10% of the Search Engine Market  

The cashback deals may be helping, but I think that bing is getting a big growth spurt right now not because people are falling in love with the search engine itself, but rather because it is a brand-new (and highly promoted) alternative to Google. For years now Google has seen itself within the cultural spotlight after riding its own wave of success, and as the article has demonstrated, now controls over 60% of the search engine market. Blockbuster movies such as "Hitch" showcased the actors "googling" anything that even resembled a question, and even large phone companies and big ISP's began using Google in their advertizing campaigns as a sign of each one's level of quality. Bing’s current level of success is just the public reaction to their sudden curiosity at a new major search engine on the web, spawned from Microsoft no less. Stagnation within Google and Yahoo’s user base makes any alternative seem like a possibility, so long as it still performs with the same efficiency as the others.

Though to be fair, I can’t completely write off Microsoft’s bing engine as foolhardy, even if they are trying to take on Google and the like. They’ve proven that they can enter (or in this case, re-enter) a market/business that is dominated by many other long-time competitors, such as the company’s emergence into the gaming console industry with the Xbox franchise. I initially thought that the Xbox would turn out to be a flop; a software company trying to build an actual game station? Ridiculous! And even if they did, there was no way Sony and Nintendo would suffer any such competition from a newbie to the market, even if they did have Microsoft’s blessing. Yet the Xbox has become an amazing success, with several iconic games such as Halo taking their places besides Sony’s epic Final Fantasy series and Nintendo’s Mario Bros. This whole “bing” business seems iffy to me, but then at the time, so did the Xbox. Who knows what could happen?

I think that it is great that there is another search engine out there that is able to gain market share. Although I'm sure that their cashback deals have helped with this, I would think that their advertising has been the underlying factor causing its popularity. If it was not for their creative and humorous commercials that are quite entertaining, I probably never would have heard of or considered using Bing.

Unfortunately, I think that they are going to struggle to gain any more of the market. Google has become the name for searching on the internet. Whenever you ask someone a question they can't answer, they almost always tell you to 'Google it.' Google has become such a useful and regular tool in people's lives that it has become a habit just to use Google.