Bing increases market share in October, but pulls from Yahoo!

Comcsore released its monthly market share figures for October. Bing reported 9.9 percent up from 9.4 percent the previous month. Meanwhile, chief rival Google increased it's substantial market share from 64.9 percent in September to 65.4 percent in October. That means that both Microsoft and Google rose by an equal amount of 0.5 percent.

It seems the losses did not pull from one another, as you might think, but from Yahoo! calling into question the strategy of Microsoft to team with Yahoo!. If Yahoo! is the one losing ground here, then Microsoft is simply taking market share from its own partner--not exactly what it had in mind when it signed an agreement with them last summer.

What's more, while gaining 2 points in five months is pretty impressive at face value, when you consider all of the money and hype that Microsoft has spent to gain that market share, you have to wonder if it was worth the trouble. They still find themselves an also ran in the Search Engine race, and it's not one that Microsoft can likely ever win. Even if they bought Yahoo! and got all their market share, they would still be sitting at around 27 percent of the market. That probably adds up to a significant amount of revenue for most companies, but is it worth the cost to Microsoft to get there?

One thing is certain, Microsoft is still not a credible threat to Google in consumer search, and it seems unlikely unless Google suddenly went away (a scenario that is not going to happen) that Microsoft will ever be more than an also ran in the search game. It makes me wonder why they bother. Sure, they have the money, but in the end is it really a market in which they can ever succeed or will they simply continue to throw good money after bad?

For more information:
- read the Comcscore press relese

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