Microsoft Announces Bing
Microsoft is launching Bing, a rebranded version of its old search engine, in attempts to increase its market share.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the launch of the company's new search engine, Bing, at News Corps' All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, California (Buisnessweek). The site is a rebranded version of Microsoft's previous search engine, Live, and is intended to accumulate a larger portion of the market currently dominated by Google (Wall Street Journal). At its existing 8 percent share, the company has not been able to benefit greatly from advertisement generated revenue. Bing hopes to reach a slightly different audience than Google, focusing primarily on four categories travel, local, shopping, and health. Reuters notes that it aims to simplify and facilitate the search process by incorporating new interactive features in place of the traditional white space. However, despite the site's major transformation, few expect any significant portion of the search market to be taken from Google. Reuters refers to an interview with Bing co-developer Satya Nadella in saying that if Microsoft's market share were to improve by one or two percentage points, he would be satisfied. Bing launches worldwide on June 3.
