14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft’s currently the only company that keeps investing in the search business in order to compete against Google, and statistics released regularly by third-party market analyst firms around the world show that all these efforts are paying off.
comScore data for the January 2016 reveals a new growth recorded by Microsoft’s search engine versus December 2015 while Google only remained at the same level as before.
Specifically, Bing powered 21.3 percent of the desktop searches in January, up 0.2 percent from the month before, while Google is still head with 63.8 percent. Yahoo comes in the third place with 12.4 percent.
The Windows 10 effect
Certainly, the push that Microsoft’s making these days on Windows 10 helps the company bring more users on Bing too, as the search engine is deeply integrated into the operating system. Furthermore, Bing is the service powering features such as Cortana and Siri, as well as the default search engine in Microsoft’s operating system, so the more users the new OS has, the bigger the Bing market share.
Right now, Windows 10 is said to be installed on approximately 200 million devices around the world, according to Microsoft’s latest figures, but the company continues its free upgrade promo until July 29, so these figures should grow even more in the coming months.
The chart you see below, which is provided by Statista, shows the growth experienced by Bing in the United Kingdom in the last 24 months, clearly pointing to very rapid adoption of the search engine following the launch of Windows 10. The biggest growth was posted in late 2015, again thanks to the arrival of the new OS, reaching a record 9.44 percent last month.
A similar ascending trend should be maintained in the next few months, as more people move to Windows 10 on both desktop computers and smartphones where Bing is the default search engine.
