Bing gains search share on Yahoo, Google (Rises Modestly In July)
Microsoft’s (MSFT) Bing gained share in the search market for the second month in a row. A good trend, but nothing that is going to make Google nervous yet. And neutral to modestly negative for Yahoo. Microsoft’s Bing search engine maintained momentum in July and gained a bit on both Google and Yahoo.
According to comScore data (Techmeme), as relayed by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, Google wound up with July search share of 64.7 percent, down from 65 percent in June. Microsoft was up to 8.9 percent in July, up from 8.4 percent in June. This means Bing has gained 90 basis points of market share in two months or a 11% market share gain. This is not terrible, but not a remarkable success, given how much Microsoft has been advertising it. Bing was supposed to be a big game-changer for Microsoft, and so far, it isn’t. We’ll have a better idea of Bing’s longer-term success in a few months.
If Bing continues to gain share it will present an interesting wrinkle to the Microsoft-Yahoo search pact. Consider the following:
* Microsoft continues to gain share on Yahoo;
* The Microsoft-Yahoo pact takes two-years to implement and perhaps longer if regulators have problems with the deal;
* Advertisers migrate to Microsoft today (from Yahoo) since it will have the ad platform going forward;
* Regulators can the Microsoft-Yahoo deal;
* Microsoft wins anyway.
Meanwhile, Yahoo’s share is falling no longer stable. That’s not good, as Yahoo will only get revenue from Bing searches performed on Yahoo, per our understanding of the deal. Therefore, it needs to grow share, and can’t afford to lose searchers to Microsoft. (As we noted earlier, fixing its mail service is crucial for that.)
