Microsoft’s Bing a Threat to Google?

Could the latest comScore report on the U.S. search engine market share suggest that Bing, Microsoft’s search engine service, is eating into Google’s dominance for search queries?

According to the report exhibiting stats for April 2011, Bing currently controls 14.1% of the total US search engine market trailing Yahoo! with 15.9% and Google’s 65.4%(source).

Although Bing still has a lot to do in order to overcome Google, Microsoft’s June 2009 start-up has been steadily gaining territory in the search engine war since its inception.

Bing had an 8%(comScore) market share when it was first launched. Today, two years later, Bing is 75% larger and according to a report by Hitwise.com, the Bing-powered search (Bing teamed up with Yahoo) results in 30% of the total U.S. search engine market share, almost half the size of Google’s current share.

Is this a threat to Google? Not necessarily the reports suggest.

Since Bing’s existence, Google’s market share stood at 65%. In comScore’s latest report, it stands at 65.4%. That is a 0.4% gain suggesting that the audience flocking to Bing is flocking from elsewhere.

Yahoo perhaps?

Exactly. Yahoo stood at 19.6% when Bing was launched and now it stands at 15.9% suggesting that Microsoft has been eating into Yahoo’s share instead of Google’s, somewhat unsurprising due to the Bing-powered search that integrates them both.

Now what remains to be seen is if the Bing and Yahoo’s powered search can push the correct buttons to topple Google. But with this teamed-up service market share growing 1-2% in the last two years that should still be an appropriate question to ask a few years down the road.