Strategic collaboration between Bing and Yahoo!
Microsoft’s search engine ‘Bing’, which was released last year, is receiving huge attention through its strategic partnership with Yahoo for the next decade. According to a report conducted by ComScore, a market research firm, Bing currently maintains 11% of market share as of July , which is a third in the search engine market following the 2nd place of Yahoo (17.1%). Even though Google has the indisputable number one place with 65.8% of market share, we must pay attention to the fact that ever since Bing began providing its services with a 4.7% market share; it has been consistently taking up Google’s market share in the past year. Which direction should Steve Ballmer’s leadership take Bing to, in order to maintain such rise in market share?
Brand Competition in search engine market
Let’s talk about ice cream a little while, which I like very much. I love ice cream and I consume it 4 to 5 times a week. I usually visit the Haagen-Dazs shop near my workplace. But a few months ago the store closed down. I assumed it was due to the fact that there were no many customers since it seemed so. But people filled up the place when a new Baskin-Robbins store took over the exact spot. In reality Haagen-Dazs is a premium ice cream brand with better taste product. Ice cream mania like me would opt for better quality ice cream but for those who go for an occasional ice cream from time to time it seems that brand awareness plays a big role. The public consume brands.
Even for search engine industry, Brands become a key success factor. It’s been over 15 years since we saw early type of web search engines and the industry is mature enough. Google is a great brand, with the word ‘google’ being registered in the dictionary. At the same time, however, Google is a slow innovator in its search engine technology. For example, compared to its initial days, the quality of its search engine has not shown major innovation despite the...