Back in the 1990s during the original browser wars between Netscape and Internet Explorer, one of Microsoft’s chief weapons was the ability to bundle IE into Windows as the default browser. With bundling came market share, or so the government argued in its antitrust case against Redmond.
Fast forward to today’s search wars. You’d think that bundling a search engine into a browser would have some impact on market share. But some new data provided by search advertising network Chitika suggests that at least for Bing, being bundled with IE isn’t doing it much good.
Chitika, which previously found that Bing searchers are cliack-happy, looked at more than 100 million search ad impressions across its network of 50,000 sites to determine which combination of browsers and search engines people are using. While Bing comes bundled with IE as the default search engine, only 10.3 percent of IE users search with Bing. This compares to 87 percent of Firefox users who search with Google and 92 percent of Safari users. Google is the default search engine for both browsers. It also commands 74 percent share on IE, suggesting that most people have no difficulty switching.
So bundling clearly isn’t giving Bing much of an advantage among IE users. The 10.3 percent share is only slightly above the 8.9 percent overall search share comScore measures for Bing in the U.S., which I mention only as a reference point. (These aren’t really comparable numbers since they come from two different studies, and the Chitika numbers include Canada as well as the U.S.). Well, at least the antitrust cops can’t bring up the old bundling argument again.
Update: Bing is only the default search engine the first time you download it. As with any browser, when you upgrade, your settings are transferred. Also, PC manufacturers make their won deals with search engines and can ship IE with whatever default search engine they want. Currently, Bing is the default search engine for Dell (worldwide), HP (U.S. and Canada) and Lenovo (worldwide) PC’s.
Well kind of, duh. I mean, we’ve known this for years. Microsoft has promoted search within its own browser not to mention operating system since like 1998 and hasn’t grown share.
But…
“While Bing comes bundled with IE as the default search engine, only 10.3 percent of IE users search with Bing.”
That’s not right. Bing isn’t the default. The default is whatever is set on your computer when IE is upgraded. It looks, sees what you have already (say Google), and that’s kept unless you choose something different.
Even if IE didn’t operate this way, I doubt it would change. People still go to Google, where it merrily suggests “hey, want to change to us?”
that’s true for any browser, the defaults transfer with upgrades. But if you download IE for the first time or are buy a new PC from Dell, HP, or Lenovo, Bing is the default on IE. See my update.
But I agree that people will go to Google regardless. Bundling doesn’t help.
quite frankly a bad article, wrong and confusing. If you say bundled it means anyone using ie8 has preset to bing. that is wrong so your article is garbage and misleading. And your correction/admission here verifies that.
No, even if you download for first time it will keep your current defaults. IE you go from 6 to 7 or 7 to 8, looks at current defaults. & since google was default on Dell until 6 months ago, that means Google for many. it’s also rare to get a machine that won’t have a manufacture default in place, so there’s virtually no case where msoft really controls the browser directly. it has to buy that default. msoft has stepped up in past year to outbid goog for those; we remain in watch & see mode to know if it will help. but we know from the pre-buyin days (before 2004ish) that when msoft DID control the default that it didn’t help. today, if you go to google with a defaultbof msoft they note that and suggest hey change to us. and since many want google, I think they do. certainly I get enough email from those puzzled how to switch when other players change them. also download any number of things from google and they suggest changing. bottom line, IE’s supposed advantage for microsoft has never played out in reality,and I doubt it will big time.
Think the difference here is that IE was a lot of people’s first browser, they didn’t know about Netscape as they were new to the web.
Isn’t your statistic that only 10.3 percent of IE users search with Bing slightly misleading ?
As far as I am aware, Bing was only bundled with IE 8. Since roughly 30 percent of IE users are on version 8 then this would suggest that the real percentage of IE 8 users that using Bing is nearer 35 percent.
And what search is bundled into almost every smartphone on the market: Google. Then netbooks are also bundled with Google. Every library/school in america has set Google as the homepage. Microsoft is helpless in the search war. They need to stick with their core, and improve their OS and mobile OS. Otherwise with all this time focused on trying to beat Google they will simple get off track and lose any market they still have a grasp on.
Trying to be an everything company when you are losing market share on your original product is flawed business.
“Trying to be an everything company when you are losing market share on your original product is flawed business.”
Microsoft is losing market share on Windows? Really? I mean I knew that Mac was making inroads very very slowly but the loss isn’t that significant (especially when you look at the world wide numbers)
Actually Apple’s Mac market share has gone down,With three years to bash Vista Apple really didn’t make much of a dent.
I love Apple products but..Tech Crunch seems to be drowning in its own fanboism’s.
People still use AOL to search for things? My grandmother must be back on the internet again…
I have seen this chart before. Me sleepy lol
Oh man, this meebo “drag to share” thing is EXTREMELY ANNOYING
Ya
Microsoft will need to do everything they can, like bundling and annoying tv commercials for it to take any market share from Google.
But i must admit Google does need a real competitor.
In case you didn’t read the article, when you upgrade it transfers over the settings.
If you think about it, Google bundles their search too. On Opera, Firefox, Safari and let’s not forget Chrome.
Ya I agree, Google seriously needs a competitor and Bing is actually half-decent.
I couldn’t agree more with Danny Sullivans comment.
Either way, for Bing to get a real piece of the market share, it’ll take more than the Yahoo search deal, etc. To beat Google they will need to continue to aggressively market Bing.
Will that even work? We’ll see in the months to come as they are sworn to take a fair share of the search market.
Isn’t the AOL market share in a way Google’s? Since AOL Search is powered by Google…
So this stat isn’t really useful, because Microsoft has lost the ability to bundle. They’re on the same playing field as everyone else.
Relying on OEMs to make them the default.
http://www.trad...spx?symbol=msft
Please remove that piece of shit “drag and share” option, ty.
I hope you realize these numbers don’t mean much. Like it was already pointed out, most IE8 users are those upgraded from earlier versions of IE, and they may have simply kept another search engine as default.
As sales of brand new PCs (especially after Windows 7 goes out) with IE8 and all default settings keep growing, so will Bing’s market share. Just wait till November and December when people who wanted to skip Vista start getting new machines with Windows 7…
not sure what people even like a bout bing? i’ve found the search results from google are still far superior, plus the front page design of bing sucks
nice try msft, better luck next time
I believe it doesn’t show a true picture as for now, cos many people who use IE have upgraded and search engine is in built in new machines with WIndows. So I would rather wait and see till there are enough new machines in the market using Windows7. This will show the true picture so probably by the start of next year we may have some trend developing.
Sonal Maheshwari
USourceIT your single source for all IT needs
10.3 + 11.7 is not equal to 22% market share.
Isn’t Internet Explorer already slow, without the need of further bloated addons? I mean come on microsoft! Almost any software from microsoft is bloated, from their operating systems, office programs, paint programs, to their internet browsers. Now if they attempted to sort out the bloating coding, i think we’d have a lot more happier customers.
Also no point trying to take on a search engine giant like google as their services, software and search engine is just too good.
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