Microsoft falls further behind in Web search
Seattle PI | at | by Mike
In early 2005, Microsoft launched its internally developed Internet search engine with great fanfare, after a large investment. Its goal was to rival Google in the growing and lucrative market.
But two years later, Microsoft has an even smaller slice of the U.S. search market than when it began, based on an analysis of statistics from two major research firms.
Numbers from Nielsen NetRatings show that the overall market has climbed to more than 7 billion queries a month, from about 4 billion when Microsoft launched its homegrown engine, then known as MSN Search. But Microsoft's volume of queries hasn't kept up with that growth -- remaining relatively flat, at 643 million queries in January.