Microsoft is to launch a multimillion-pound TV ad campaign for its search engine Bing, as part of a major marketing push designed to challenge Google's dominance of the UK search market, MediaGuardian.co.uk can reveal.
Microsoft will certainly have its work cut out winning over consumers – it currently holds about a 3% share of the search market while Google controls about 90%.
"This is a big moment – we are taking out our slingshots and taking on Goliath," said the managing director and vice-president of consumer and online at Microsoft UK, Ashley Highfield, adding that he believed Bing met a real desire from both consumers and advertisers.
piatkow
1:23 pm on Mar 8, 2010 (gmt 0)
Much as I prefer Bing I find that I have to make a positive decision not to type Google whenever I search, as it has become so ingrained.
The battle is to make people use "bing" as a generic term for searching instead of "google".
TinkyWinky
1:44 pm on Mar 8, 2010 (gmt 0)
Provided they sort out their UK-centric results in some key areas.... they could certainly make some in-roads.... how much of an in-road is anyone's guess though.
engine
3:46 pm on Mar 8, 2010 (gmt 0)
I made Bing default on my wife's PC and she hasn't said anything negative.
She did ask, what was Bing, when I did it.
The ads will certainly bring it to the attention of many more that don't know of Bing.
pawas
4:36 pm on Mar 8, 2010 (gmt 0)
I think the money will be better spend on increasing their index size and quality of results. They only index 20%-30% of pages from any given site when compared to Google. Do a search for 4-5 words on bing and you will really know how crap the results are. Like a few days back I was finding information on A5 y-spoke wheels, so I did a search on bing "audi a5 y-spoke wheels", not found a single link useful, did the same on Google and was served with high quality and relevant results. They are pouring millions of dollars on advertising. Ads will not do any good if the product itself is crappy and incomplete. People will do some test searches, and will move back to Google, at least that's what I did.
nomis5
5:52 pm on Mar 8, 2010 (gmt 0)
In the UK I believe there is a large number of people who do not like Microsoft and unless they can hide their identity as far as Bing is concerned, I doubt they will make any great inroads however much money they pour into Bing. And that mention of taking out their slingshots and taking on Goliath is a joke! Who is the real Goliath between the two companies?
nickreynolds
9:18 am on Mar 9, 2010 (gmt 0)
Good for Microsoft. Here in the UK,I think people only use an alternative to google if somehow it's got loaded on their browser (eg by the manufacturer). Bing has very little brand awareness.
However, I'm suprised at the stat that Bing only has 3% of the search market in the UK. Across a broad range of my UK oriented sites, it's between 5% and 12%.
My view is a little different to the previous poster - apart from a few tech savvy people, I find people don't care a jot about Microsoft - they happily use Word, Internet Explorer etc thinking that's just what you use, that it's on their computer and that's fine.
piatkow
9:32 am on Mar 9, 2010 (gmt 0)
I know from looking at forums targetted at the less technical user that a large proportion of people use what comes out of the box and think that all computers are just the same as theirs.
