It may have spent millions on traditional and digital marketing to promote its rebranded search engine, but July figures show that Microsoft's Bing attracted only an 8.9% share of the US search market.
That's an increase of 0.5%, up from 8.4% in June.
In comparison, Google's share remained buoyant at 64.7%, down from 65%, and Yahoo - which will be joining forces with Bing later in the future - attracted a 19.3% share of the market, down from 19.6% in June.
On present figures, an united Bing and Yahoo would have 28.2% of the American search market - still less than half of Google's user base. It will be a significant audience, but will it be large enough to mount a challenge against the market leader? Maybe, but success will rely on more than clever online marketing — performance, and more than a little luck, will be key.
