Google rules the search market, but Bing has made real inroads in gaining a bigger share of the market. Comscore reports that Bing has slightly more than 20 percent of the U.S. search market on its own between March 15 and April 15.
However, since Yahoo’s search engine is Bing powered, it might be fair to say Bing’s share is closer to 33 percent of the market, as Yahoo had 12.7 percent of the market.
Microsoft’s foray into Windows 8 didn’t do any favors for the software giant. The state of that OS and Internet Explorer drove people to use Chrome, where they’d be more likely to “Google it.” Interestingly, Bing’s U.S. desktop search share actually grew by more than 10 percent over the past year.
However, Bing has quite a bit going for it these days. It is the default search tool for Xbox, Windows, Windows Phone and Office. When Windows 10 is released on July 29, users will find Bing-powered desktop assistant Cortana integrated into their user experience.
That Bing search bar will be present all the time under Windows 10. Don’t expect very many people to change their search engine, because basically most of us are lazy.
Machine Learning
Microsoft’s Stefan Weitz said with Bing, Microsoft is focusing on machine learning and natural language search, as well as weaving search technology into what users already are doing. Bing will be ubiquitous in your Windows 10 environment. The desktop search bar always will be accessible.
In an interview with Time, Bing’s general manager Ryan Gavin was quoted saying “We fundamentally believe that as search evolves, it will move well beyond the point where I launch a browser and type a query into a search box.”
And there’s going to be a lot of opportunities for those “Bing” searches – Microsoft plans to get Windows 10 with Cortana and Bing on one billion devices.
But what about developers?
APIs for Bing have been available for quite some time. Will this potential market increase developer interest in embedding search results in their applications or websites? The Bing Search API, available since April 2012, enables developers to embed this using XML or JSON.
One way developers might choose to delve into the world of Bing is by adding Bing Maps to applications. At Microsoft Build 2015, the new map control built into Windows 10 was introduced. Mike Ammerlaan and Rohan Thakkar explained that with a single map control, Universal Windows apps can be created targeting phone, tables and PCs. The maps provide immersive 3D cities, offline road maps and StreetSide imagery, all with a map control built into the Windows 10 SDK. Hear more from them in this Channel 9 presentation.
At that same event, Ricky Brundritt spoke about methods for integrating Bing Maps into cross platforms apps. A demo showed how it can be done using the Apache Cordova tools in Visual Studio 2015.
Will your ISV push Bing’s search market share up, or at least help Microsoft reach that one billion devices goal?
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