Bing: o pequeno motor que… não podia?

Se você comprou um dispositivo eletrônico no último ano, você vai notar que a Microsoft está vendendo o seu motor de busca Bing mais do que eu anunciar meus produtos. (Em uma nota totalmente alheios, baixar Cabra, meu programa flashcard livre e de código aberto.)

Isso é tudo muito bem, desde que você está autorizado a anunciar, but Microsoft really goes to the extreme:

1. Microsoft signed a deal with Blackberry so that Bing would be the only search engine available on Blackberrys.
2. My sister bought a new computer and was offered a free song download if she searched with Bing.
3. Microsoft started a $100 million ad campaign to get people to say “Just Bing it.”)
4. Microsoft actually paid Bing users (Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating. They gave you a rebate if you bought something from a Bing search.)
5. Bing advertises on Google.

Sounds pretty desperate, if you know what I mean.

But the big question is: did it work? Microsoft says yes (but keep in mind that these are the same guys who said Vista was gonna be great.) I’ve read that Bing’s drawing more advertisers, but as far as market share goes it’s not doing very well.

Here are the exact numbers from April ’10 to April ’11:

Google – 90.39% para 90.29% (-0.10%)

Yahoo – 4.29% para 3.81% (-0.48%)

Bing – 3.57% para 3.99% (+0.42%)

Bing’s made progress, but not very much (at the rate it’s going, it would take Bing 166 years to match Google.) I’d expect more from Bing when Microsoft goes to such desperate ends to advertise it.

So should we mark off Bing as a complete failure? It does have a good amount of market share, but it’s far from being the Google killer that Microsoft anticipated.