Microsoft Bing Nibbles At Google's Dominance

Microsoft Bing is making progress against Google in the search-engine market. But unfortunately for Bing, Microsoft's search engine is nibbling at Google's crumbs rather than taking large bites out of its pie.

For the first time since Microsoft Bing went live, four weeks of data are available for groups like Hitwise to analyze.

Hitwise bills itself as providing "insights on how 10 million U.S. Internet users interact with more than 1 million Websites." It makes sense, then, that Hitwise would be interested in seeing how Microsoft's search engine stacked up against reigning incumbent Google after one month.

According to MarketWatch, Hitwise reports that Google still maintains a healthy 74 percent of U.S. Internet search in the four weeks ending on May 27. Microsoft Bing -- which was unveiled at the end of May -- ensnared 5.25 percent of the search market over those four weeks.

Heaping praise on Microsoft and Bing for the ability to challenge Google in the search-engine arena might be a little premature. Still, carving out a little more than 5 percent of a market in about a month is a respectable debut.

The numbers being reported by Hitwise show that Bing has cooled off from its launch, according to numbers reported by ComScore in the middle of June.

For the week of June 8 to 12, ComScore reported that Microsoft claimed 12.1 percent of Internet search in the U.S., up from 11.3 percent during the week of Bing's debut. Previous to Bing's launch, Microsoft claimed 9.1 percent of the search market. Google in the month of May, meanwhile, commanded about 65 percent of the search engine market.

Ultimately, one month's worth of data likely isn't enough to start declaring that the king is dead. What it does do, on the other hand, is provide a baseline that will show how Bing fares against Google in the coming months and year.