Bing going Bust

Found this while slumming on Yahoo (you don't think there's just a tiny bit of Yahoo schadenfreude going on here, do you???).

If Bing's first month represented Microsoft's (MSFT) best shot at stealing search market share from Google (GOOG) -- complete with Bing ads everywhere -- it's a huge disappointment.

Microsoft's U.S. search market share was 8.4% in June, up from 8.0% in May, according to comScore.

It would have been a disaster if Bing didn't grow at all with all that advertising and free promotion via news coverage, so at least it's up a little. (And represents Microsoft's best month since 8.5% share in January.) But gaining 40 basis points -- especially as Google's 65.0% share stayed steady -- is not an impressive victory.

It'll still be a few months before we know if Bing is going to be a long-term success for Microsoft. But based on this lackluster first month's showing -- and recent survey results suggesting 98% of searchers won't switch to Bing as their primary search engine -- there's little reason to get excited.

Meanwhile, Yahoo continued to lose share, accounting for 19.6% of the U.S. search market in June, down from 20.1% in May. After having stabilized, downward momentum for Yahoo is not good, and makes a search deal with Microsoft more likely.

Yes indeed. Every time Microsoft tries to do something contemporary and/or cool to match the Googles and the Apples of this world, it always comes out flatter than an open day-old Coke. Search. MP-3 players (Zune). The only thing that is remotely successful is XBox, and that's because it was Sony's to loose, not Microsoft's to win.

Of course that doesn't mean that Google's Chrome OS is going to wipe up the floor with Windows (what an odd metaphor). Google could easily wind up being as spectacular a failure with it's foray into operating systems as Microsoft continues to be with search. Google may have the coolness, but they currently lack the hard-core engineering discipline required to develop and support something as complex as an OS in the manner it should be supported for widespread acceptance. Only time will tell.