The Guardian reports that in America, Bing found 20.1 percent market share during March 2015, according to analysts comScore. This left Google with 64.4 percent of searches.
Across the Atlantic, Bing found just 3.37 percent share in Europe in the same period though. Google clearly dominates with a 90.94 percent share.
The figures come as Google is found by the EU to be abusing its dominance and promoting its own services to European users, leading to anti-trust charges against the company.
Microsoft has been steadily growing and improving Bing for many years. Its users often say how they like the feel of the search engine, with the “Bing Image of the Day” on the homepage being a particular favourite feature.
Bing has also been acquiring new features at a rapid pace. Just this week, Microsoft announced several improvements to image searches. When you view an image of a product, you can now additionally get shopping links to buy it displayed beneath the photo. The company has also improved its Android and iOS apps.
Behind the scenes, Bing powers many major products. Yahoo relies on Bing for its search technology. Siri on iOS uses Bing for its web searches. It goes without saying that Microsoft’s own voice assistant, Cortana, is entirely powered by Bing and will be very heavily promoted around the launch of Windows 10.
Bing launched in 2009 as a standalone search engine designed to compete with the already-established Google. In the past six years, it has grown to become the second-largest search engine worldwide.
Although Google remains the go-to search engine for the majority of the population, Bing is clearly becoming a powerful contender. Its tight integration with core Microsoft services is increasing its exposure to the public and will become even more evident with Windows 10 where a Bing-powered searchbar is available directly from the taskbar.
