Microsoft's Bing Gains On Google, But MJ's Death Reveals Its Weaknesses

July 3, 2009 9:41 a.m. EST

New York, NY (BANG) - Microsoft's 'Bing' search engine continues to gain market share against the worldwide industry leader, Google. However, the recent death of pop superstar Michael Jackson has made some Bing users wary of leaving Google for good.

Bing officially launched on June 3, initially taking over what was previously the Microsoft 'Live Search' market share. However, after a month on the Web, Bing has slightly increased its share from 7.81% of all U.S.-based searches to 8.23%.

Microsoft has aggressively marketed Bing, launching it in a storm of advertising on television and online. Microsoft also beat Google to searching "tweets" from Twitter users; the microbloging site which has gained popularity for its ability to break trending news online.

Yet in the wake of Michael Jackson's death, Bing's search result architecture couldn't keep up with the public demand for instant news.

"By most reports, Bing did not deliver the best experience for our customers soon after TMZ posted the news on their blog," Bing senior product planner Jacquelyn Krones explained. "As Search Engine Journal pointed out, we had the story but it was hidden at the bottom of the main page and even deeper in our xRank result."