Although Google did its best to bury the news by releasing Wave, the tech-sphere has been full of talk of Bing for the last couple of weeks. After beta variations, and having finally settled on a name that is ridiculous enough to make you wonder how much they wasted on branding whilst at the same time being better than Live Search, Microsoft’s new search engine was unleashed on the world (courtesy of a massive ad campaign).

Since then there has been a lot of talk about whether it would be enough to push Google off its perch. But whilst some people have rightly pointed out that there is actually very little keeping people from dropping Google, as there are no transfer costs for the user, it seems unlikely that Bing will topple Google any time soon. At least not whilst Google enjoys market share of more than 90% in many European countries. But what it could do of course is push Yahoo! from its position as first runner-up to Google.

It’s been argued by many that people are now so used to using their preferred search engine that they would choose it even if it didn’t give the best results. And so to test this, and see whether Bing really does have a chance, a Microsoft engineer has set-up a blind search ‘taste-test’. And being the curious fellow that I am, I thought I’d see whether this proposition holds true. It would seem that it does and it might not be something that Yahoo! will want to hear.

Of the 40 or so people within the Engine Group who answered my call to test out the blind search engine, 100% said that they currently use Google as their default engine. But when asked whose results they picked when they didn’t know which engine was providing which, the answers will be making Steve Ballmer feel all warm inside:

• Google – 60%
• Bing – 27%
• Yahoo! – 13%

Since its launch Bing has taken a lead over Yahoo! globally. But these results suggest that this may not be a blip and that Microsoft may finally have found something that may mean they can take 2nd spot on merit, rather than having to buy the engine in 2nd place.

Bing cherries by Wildcat Dunny on flickr

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