Skip to main content

Bing now powers 1 in 5 desktop searches in the US

Microsoft’s Bing has claimed a 20 percent share of the U.S. desktop search market for the first time since its launch in 2009. According to the latest figures from comScore, Bing’s slice of the pie rose 0.3 percentage points to 20.1 percent in March, while Google dropped 0.1 percent to claim 64.4 percent of searches run through a desktop browser.

It’s a significant milestone in Bing’s growth as mobile, desktop and Web landscapes continue to shift. Just this week Microsoft and Yahoo thrashed out a new deal that states 51 percent of Yahoo search results must have Bing-powered adverts alongside them. With the introduction of iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, meanwhile, Apple has switched from Google to Bing for its Spotlight search feature.

Recommended Videos

It’s a very different story outside of the United States, however. In Europe, where Google is facing antitrust allegations, it still enjoys a 90.94 percent share of the desktop search market, with Bing stuck back on 3.37 percent. Globally, Google enjoys 87.95 percent of the market, whereas Bing claims 4.4 percent. Even with figures like these, Microsoft will be encouraged by signs that it’s finally starting to get a foothold.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

The launch of Windows 10 isn’t too far away now, and you can expect Bing integration to once again feature heavily throughout the operating system, so this may improve the search engine’s fortunes even further. The biggest loser has been Yahoo, which was claiming up to 20 percent of the share of search in certain markets before Bing arrived on the scene.

In today’s climate, it’s not just about throwing out search results — it’s about providing a ‘front page’ to the Internet where users can get images, video, content and personalized assistants. Don’t forget Cortana will be making an appearance in Windows 10, powered of course by Bing.

[Image courtesy of aradaphotography/Shutterstock.com]

David Nield
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Dave is a freelance journalist from Manchester in the north-west of England. He's been writing about technology since the…
Google now wants you to scroll forever on its Search for mobile
google search mobile

Continuous scrolling is synonymous with social media sites seeking to keep you on their app/website. Whether it's Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook -- all of them offer continuous scrolling so that you stay on their service for as long as possible. Now, Google wants you to endlessly scroll search results on its Search page for mobile. The company says the new change will make "browsing search results more seamless and intuitive."

From the explanation that Google has provided on its blog, it looks like Search on mobile will showcase more related results to open-ended questions like "What to cook with potatoes?" instead of simply showing you the results from the second page of the Search.

Read more
Will Google ever lose its throne as king of search? Here are its main contenders
Person using Google on a laptop.

“Advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results,” Google’s founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, argued in a research paper when they were still working out of their Stanford dorm rooms.

Today, Google is synonymous with the web -- but it’s also far from the sort of “competitive and transparent” search engine Brin and Page set out to develop decades ago. Google’s journey into the dictionary and becoming a trillion-dollar empire demanded a slate of fatal modifications to its original blueprint. The result is a search engine that buries organic links under an avalanche of ads, keeps tabs on its visitors’ every move and click, and manipulates results by tapping into the giant pool of data Google harvests from the rest of its services.

Read more
The best alternatives to Google Search
Five search engines that won't track every move you make.

Google may be the biggest and most popular search engine by far, but its data harvesting practices can leave a bad taste in your mouth. But it's not the only search engine out there, and in fact, many of them can offer something that Google doesn't: Privacy.

Here are some of the best alternatives to Google Search, with a collection of useful features and the option of remaining entirely anonymous, no matter what you're looking for.
Startpage

Read more