Microsoft chips away at Google's search market share, Yahoo in third place

Vu Anh Nguyen

Bing is one of Microsoft’s key businesses and  has also been one of its bigger money black holes until this year. Reflected by the financials, Microsoft is slowly gaining market share in the search space, along with Yahoo, at the expense of a still dominating Google.
The figures are taken from comScore’s latest U.S. desktop search market share report for November 2015. While Google is still taking the lead at 63.9%, that’s a dip from 67% a year ago. Bing (listed as Microsoft Sites) is now at nearly 21% market share, an improvement since Bing passed the 20% mark some months ago. Yahoo also gains some share but is still at third place at 12.5%.
comscore-search-desktop-nov-15
The rise in Microsoft’s search market share is attributed to the release of Windows 10 on PC, which passed 120 million installs recently. Microsoft has reported it acquires 20% of all search revenue from Windows 10 devices, as noted by AdAge, and as the company push for its 1 billion users aim, Bing’s share is expected to rise in the future.
Despite painting a positive outlook for Bing’s effort, the research doesn’t count mobile uses, Microsoft’s weakest link and Google’s playground. With Google’s own operating system taking first place in the smartphone OS race, and its namesake search engine the default on the second place’s (iOS) only browser, it’s clear Microsoft needs to put much more work in than currently to even challenge Google’s search dominance in the mobile space.