Bing, the search engine from Microsoft is set to celebrate its first birthday this week, but there might not be as many people coming to the party as expected.

After being re-branded from Live Search 12 months ago, Bing saw its volume of unique visitors from the US rise by 16 per cent after five months to 83 million, and its share of the search market increase by 1.9 per cent to 9.9 per cent.

However, as commented on in a piece by the Financial Times, the search engine has seen some of that initial growth disappear in recent months. According to figures from research firm Hitwise, Bing saw its share of the market increase three months on the trot to finish February 2010 with a 9.7 per cent share of the market.

These gains have now been reversed however, with Bing’s market share falling to 9.62 per cent in March and 9.43 per cent in April.

The recent trend will have come as a disappointment to Bing executives who would not doubt expected to see its share of the search market continue to rise.

In the UK the company has tried to continue the promotion of Bing with a multi-million pound television campaign. The advertising push, which uses the strapline “Bing and decide” began at the start of March and will run until June.

By Richard Morris

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Motorola has reached a deal with Microsoft that will make Bing search and mapping services available on its Google Android-packing phones.

Motorola said the partnership with Microsoft means that a Bing bookmark and search widget will be loaded on new mobile phones. The first ones are set to be made available in China.

The move came shortly after Motorola struck a similar deal to its Chinese customers use Baidu, among others, as the default web browser instead of Google on Android-based phones.

The partnerships come against a backdrop of Google’s dispute with China over censorship. With Motorola banking on its partnership with Google to offer Android to the market, it would make business sense for it to have partnerships with alternative search providers should Google decide to quit the country, analysts believe.

Microsoft’s search engine Bing is now appearing as part of airings of ‘The Simpsons’ on Channel 4.

The three-month deal to air the clips at the start and end of the show, and before and after its commercial break is thought to have cost more than £500,000.

As part of a bid to drive Bing’s share of the search engine market Bing will sponsor ‘The Simpsons’ show on Channel 4 week nights and Channel 4+1.

The programme segments, known as ‘idents’ are the first time Microsoft has used sponsorship TV and coincide with ‘The Simpsons’ 20th anniversary.

They include Bing sponsorship credits before and after the episodes, as well as during ad breaks.

The Bing sponsorship idents aim to be a humorous take on a family using Bing to solve problems.

The accompanying ad campaignquestions the need for the “information overload”, which rival search engines provide. Instead it will promote Bing’s ability to provide clear and concise results.

Bing launched in November 2009 as an attempt by Microsoft to challenge Google and Yahoo! in the search engine market.

Microsoft has a four per cent share of UK searches, the same as Yahoo!, but both are dwarfed by Google’s 86 per cent, according to Nielsen Online statistics for January.

Microsoft's search engine Bing managed to increase its share of the American search market by 4 per cent in February, according to new figures.

Data released by Experian Hitwise showed Bing climbing 4 per cent in the four weeks ending February 27, finishing the month with a 9.7 per cent share of the total US search market.

Google slipped slightly from 71.49 per cent to 70.95 per cent, but remains far and away the largest player in the search engine market.

There was no change for Yahoo, which remains in second place ahead of Bing with a 14.57 per cent share. Fourth placed Ask.com however managed to make the largest gain of all, increasing its percentage share from 2.64 to 2.84 – a jump of 8 per cent.

According to Experian, a further 73 search engines shared the remaining 1.94 per cent slice of the market between them.

The results will be welcome news for Bing, which launched a multi-million pound television advertising campaign in the UK on Wednesday. The firm is aggressively looking to build on its position and get its hands on Google’s lion’s share.

Microsoft is to sponsor the Simpson’s cartoon series as part of an attempt to push its Bing search engine in the UK.

The Bing adverts will appear for the first time on Thursday night at 6pm, which will mark the first time ever the US company has sponsored a UK television show.

According to a report by The Telegraph, the adverts will appear on Channel 4 at the start, during and at the end of the Simpsons for the next three months. The American series, which features the now iconic characters of Homer and Bart Simpson, is celebrating its 20^th anniversary this year.

The latest adverts are part of a wider multi-million pound television advertising campaign in Britain which began last night during the football match between Manchester United and AC Milan.

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A number of new features have made their bow on the revamped MSN homepage, which made its first official appearance today.

Five months after the first sneak previews appeared, the new look previewed boasts a much more stripped-back appearance, with white replacing the previous blue background.

The choice of content on the homepage takes most of its cues from structured Bing data, which among other things, will inform the choice of local news which appears.

About 45 per cent of Bing’s traffic is estimated to come through the MSN homepage, so it is hardly surprising that the new site ‘front door’ includes many pointers to it.

MSN joins a raft of major new homepage roll-outs in recent months, which have included Yahoo!, AOL and, in the UK, TalkTalk, the new identity of the former Tiscali ISP.

The MSN creation contains a number of options to create a personalised front page, including ‘My Cities’, which lets users customise MSN Local Edition and at the same time save details of up to three other locations to follow; Hyper-local Tweets, which highlights posts on the Microblogging site again relevant to the user’s home areas; and TrendWatch, again a ‘Twitter-watching’ application which flags up the day’s top trends and biggest movers.

Mike Fischer, the chief marketing officer for Microsoft’s consumer and online division, has left the company according to a report by Marketing Magazine.

The news of his departure comes just hours before Microsoft launches a multi-million pound campaign to promote its Bing search engine. The television adverts will start to air on Wednesday and continue into mid-June.

The campaign has the strap line “Bing and decide” and is aimed at reducing Google’s dominance in the search market.

Fischer spent almost seven years at the company, joining Microsoft’s consumer and online department this time last year. His team, which looked after brands including Windows, Hotmail and Messenger, was responsible for the recent I’m a PC and Windows 7 Was My Idea campaign in the UK, aimed at promoting the Windows 7 operating system.

Marketing Magazine said Microsoft declined to comment on the news.

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A multi-million pound television advertising campaign is about to be launched by Microsoft in order to promote its Bing search engine.

The adverts, which will be screened from Wednesday, come with the strapline “Bing and decide”. Microsoft believes some people may have forgotten there are alternative search engines to Google and is hoping to draw these internet users to Bing during the three-month campaign.

Ashley Highfield, managing director and vice-president of consumer and online at Microsoft UK, told The Guardian his company is taking out its slingshots and taking on Goliath.

He explained the television adverts will show people that Bing simplifies the search process and does not bombard users with information like its competitors.

They will also attempt to win hearts as well as minds by making an emotional connection with internet users, Highfield added.

The campaign is due to run until the middle of June.

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Current timescales suggest that both companies want to complete the transition by the summer, but this could slip if its implementation puts in jeopardy revenues for this traditionally busy period.

Bing, the search engine launched by Microsoft last June, is capable of making a profit, according to a top Microsoft Executive.

Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft’s online audience business, said finalising the deal with Yahoo and increasing its share of the search market is the key to success.

Mehdi told Reuters: “As soon as we close and implement the Yahoo deal, we have achieved a milestone: for advertisers, we are a credible number two.

“Really now, the goal is about share gain. If we grow share, we will grow our way into profitability, and we have confidence we can do that.”

Microsoft currently has a 10.7 per cent share of the market, compared with Yahoo’s 17.3 per cent and Google’s 65.7 per cent.

If Microsoft’s deal with Yahoo is approved by the US regulator, it would take the company’s share of the search market to close to 30 per cent, which is far more likely to attract advertisers.

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