Microsoft Corp is confident its search engine Bing can match up to industry leader Google following its tie-up with rival Yahoo, the US software giant’s regional president has said.
“The combination of Bing through Microsoft and Bing through Yahoo has done a lot over the last few years,” Ali Faramawy, Microsoft’s MENA president, told Arabian Business.
“We continue to work on that and are looking forward to getting more and more of the market.”
Bing was launched in May 2009, and was followed shortly by Microsoft announcing it would buy Yahoo’s internet search and advertising businesses.
Under the terms of the deal, which was approved in February 2010, Yahoo’s website would use the Microsoft-owned search engine, and the two firms would share the revenues.
Bing has since built up a customer base, but Google continues to dominate the search engine market. Data from US analysts Experian Hitwise show Google accounted for 66.12 percent of all US searches conducted in the four weeks ending Oct 1.
“You need to change the game plan. We need to continue to improve on this. We have made some really great improvements, particularly in the Arabic language and,” said Faramawy.
“This industry evolves. We all know leaders can change and different trends can come and companies can use those trends to change it… We have done it before.”
Google told Arabian Business in June it was “aggressively” hiring staff and boosting investment in both its English and Arabic-language products in the region.
Google said in February that internet usage in the Middle East grew 39 percent in 2010, to 86 million people, up from 64 million the previous year.
The digital advertising business – led by search engines, banner ads, mobile texts and social media, will swell to $170m this year (of a $3bn MENA advertising pie), up from $120m in 2010, the technology giant said.
Bing may have made good inroads into the market but it will face a major challenge to overthrow Google, said industry analyst Greg Sterling, of Sterling Market Intelligence.
“Microsoft has created a very solid competitor in Bing. I think Microsoft can continue to innovate and challenge Google. And if Windows phones are successful this will also help,” he said. “But in mobile, Google’s browser-based search market share is something above 95 percent. That’s almost unassailable at the moment and tied to the success of Android devices and the iPhone, where Google is the default search engine.”
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