Bing celebrates 5 years: this is how the Microsoft search engine has evolved

Five years ago, Microsoft launched Bing, a facelift for its old Live Search browser. Thus, those from Redmond intended to take the search business more seriously and stand up to the ubiquitous Google.

If we have to value those five years by the evolution of the search engine, Bing will not fare very well. Yes, a lot has changed compared to that first version, but always trailing Google and forgetting users who are not in the United States.

Bing reached a stage where search no longer consisted of displaying a list of links, but providing truly relevant information to the user.Microsoft included this idea in Bing early on, even in its internal testing period when it was known as Kumo.

At the official launch there weren't many surprises. Broadly speaking, it integrated the already existing vertical search engines of Live Search, and the only thing that was newer was the idea of ​​better interpreting natural language to offer data, images and videos and not just links.

Bing didn't hit the social search either, at least initially. It wasn't until late 2010 that integrating your circle of friends into search results got serious, when Google had already been running something similar for a year. Now Bing is superior in this respect, mainly because Google thought it would be a good idea to put Google+ in our soup.

Yes, Bing has been improving little by little, each time better understanding our queries and showing more information without leaving the page.In this sense, the redesign of two years ago and moving to a three-column format helped. And, of course, they've also worked on results and tried to prove it with campaigns like Bing It On.

And even so, Bing still isn't a serious threat to Google As I said at the beginning, it has been trailed by the Internet giant web ( although, it must be said, lately they have managed to open their own path more) and it has not yet managed to offer a clear differential value. And for sample, market share numbers.

Little progress in market share, and most at the expense of Yahoo!

We must begin this section by commenting that nobody is very clear about the exact numbers of market share of search engines. On the one hand, we have those from NetMarketShare and StatCounter, which measure how many users arrive from each search engine to the pages they monitor.On the other, we have the ComScore numbers that try to measure how many times the search engine is used, even if the user does not click on any result. In fact, there is some controversy regarding the latter as to the way they are measured.

No matter where we look, Bing numbers are nothing to get excited about

Be that as it may, the overall picture we get from all sources is the same: Bing has done little harm to Google. What it has gained in market share has been mainly thanks to Yahoo!, as discussed in this Search Engine Land article.

"In absolute numbers, the best data is given by comScore. In April this year, Bing (or, rather, Microsoft Search, as the consultancy calls it) took over 18.7% of the US market, while Google continued to lead with 67.6%. "

If we listen to the StatCounter figures, things change. Bing's market share would be 10.2% and Google's 81.8%, a worse result for Microsoft.

But the main problem comes with the global figures. Remember that most of Bing's features are not available outside the US, so you can imagine that the results are worse. 6.74% according to StatCounter, far behind the 68.7% of Google and the 17.17% of the Chinese search engine Baidu.

The future: Cortana and Bing as a platform

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It seems subject to little discussion that Microsoft has failed in its attempt to stand up to Google. I needed something very powerful to beat such an entrenched search engine - people don&39;t search the Internet>At the moment."

"And now the outlook is looking very interesting. The fight will no longer be in who has the best results, but in who knows you best. And there Microsoft has a lot to gain with Bing as a platform, the brain behind the vision of One Microsoft, from the unique ecosystem of those from Redmond."

Unlike five years ago, Bing is not starting from a bad position here On the one hand it has already taken a very good first step with Cortana and Finder integration on Windows and Windows Phone. On the other hand, Google still does not seem to be very clear about what to do with Google Now on the desktop and also has to think about what to do with the failed bet that is Google+. Apple, except for surprise, does not seem like serious competition in this sense: in Cupertino they have never been very good at hitting the mark in the world of online services.

As a search engine, Bing has failed. But as a platform it has a lot of potential, as long as Microsoft takes it as a central focus (which it already does) and remembers that there are more countries besides United States (which does not seem to be so clear).