Awareness will gain Bing market share, not new functionality

June 12, 2009
by Richard Gregory

Understandably, there is much talk about whether Microsoft’s re-skinned search engine, Bing, is “special” enough to eat into Google’s 90% share of market. I’m specifically fascinated by people’s praise for some of the new functionality, including local, Bing Image Search and video search.

Why?

The reality is most of these elements have Live Search and were Live Search by industry insiders.

So, if Bing helps Microsoft grow its share of the search market it will not be because of any new whizzy functionality, it will be because they shouted about it.

We’re already seeing the growth in buzz around Bing following its launch last week, and the reported $100m US ad spend will surely continue this shift in awareness. In fact, this investment in advertising is so large it surely MUST have an impact. AdAge helped put this in context by pointing out that $50m is a large budget for a consumer roll-out and Google spent $25 in the whole of last year.

I’m sure Mr Ballmer will be kicking himself for not spending the ad budget sooner if Microsoft does manage to grow market share through Bing!