Gates concedes search to Google

Posted May 31st 2006 12:45PM by Howard Tsung
Filed under: Conventions and Conferences, Internet, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO)

"They're still very much the leader," Gates conceded regarding Google's search lead over MSN at the recent D4 - All Things Digital conference in San Diego.

Not that Mr. Gates could necessarily dispute the numbers from comScore, which place Google in a commanding first with roughly 43% of the search market, with Yahoo! placing in second with 28%, and MSN rounding off the top 3 with about 13%. Of course, numbers can often be ambiguous depending on where they come from.

Gates isn't about to sideline MSN though, saying of Google that he thought it is innovating less than expected and that the contest for search supremacy is more of a five-year battle than a permanent incumbency.

Gates led with a comment that when MSN is ready to go head-to-head with Google, Microsoft will be sure to let users know, and with $2 billion slated for investment into MSN, that race might be sooner than expected.

Tags: google, microsoft, msn, search, yahoo

Print this

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

5-31-2006 @ 2:14PM

Heywood U. Reemore said...

I've been using Google out of habit for years. But after I launched my own website, I noticed Yahoo and MSN were much more on the ball. Google doesn't seem to crawl often enough and updates to my site don't show up for over a month. MSN, however, seems to know my site pretty well. So, of course, I've started using the other search engines for my other searches as well, now. The big hurdle for MSN is going to be trying to break users of the Google habit.