Even though Microsoft Windows has dominated in PC World for decades now, the company has always had a hard time coming to grips with the Internet, and more specifically, how to monetize their web presence. For example, Microsoft’s “Live Search” has remained a distant third behind Google and Yahoo since its inception. But lately, Microsoft’s share of the search market has been in near-freefall.
In February, Microsoft’s Web searches were down another .2% as reported by ComScore, a leading Internet analytics company. This continues a downward trend for Microsoft that has remained unchanged over the last three years.
In September of 2007, Microsoft revamped its search engine, in an attempt to make the search results more relevant to the user’s query and improve the usability of their interface. But overall, the improvements — called Live Search 2.0 — failed to boost Microsoft’s ratings against either Yahoo or Google.
Microsoft claims that their search engine algorithm is now comparable to Google’s, and that the only challenge for the company is in marketing their search engine, and changing the habits of billions of Web users who have grown accustomed to just “Googling” information.
In fact, Google has become so successful online that their brand name has become synonymous with Internet search. For example, the phrase “Google it” is now commonly uttered in many different languages around the world, and has even found its way into dictionaries and textbooks.
Yahoo also lags significantly behind Google, but at least they’re still in the game. In January, Google handled 5.86 billion Web searches, while Yahoo boasted 2.14 billion searches. Compare those figures to Microsoft’s humble 953 million searches in January, and it is easy to see why the company is concerned about the declining relevance of its Live Search business.
To combat these deplorable results, Microsoft has put in an unsolicited bid to buy Yahoo, and help the company gain market share against the seemingly all-powerful Google. But even combining Yahoo’s Search engine with Microsoft Live Search will not immediately threaten Google, which currently controls approximately 75% of the market.
In fact, many analysts say that Microsoft’s poor track record in the online search area makes it unlikely they could compete successfully with Google, even if they had double both Yahoo and Microsoft’s current market share. At the end of the day, Microsoft still lacks an intuitive understanding of what Web surfers want and need.
It takes more than a highly functioning search algorithm or clever marketing to make a successful search engine. It’s also about understanding the culture of the Web, something Microsoft continues to struggle with.
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