Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced during the National Summit in Detroit that Bing would have a potentially hard and long road as it attempts to compete with Google in the search-engine space. Ballmer also hinted that the IT industry could provide the innovation necessary to revive both Detroit and possibly a recession-moribund nation.Microsoft's
new search engine, Bing, may have gained market-share during its first few weeks
of release, but Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sees a long road ahead for the
application as it attempts to challenge Google.
"We have had some very good initial response," Ballmer said
during the National Summit in Detroit on June 17, according to Reuters. "I dont
want to over-set expectations. We are going to have to be tenacious and keep up
the pace of innovation over a long period of time."
According to a June 17 report by research firm ComScore, Bing
acquitted itself well during its second week of release, with its daily
penetration among U.S. searchers increasing by 3 percentage points to 16.7
percent.
During that same June 8-12 period, Microsofts share of
U.S. search result pages increased to 12.1 percent, a gain of 3 percentage
points over the weeklong period preceding the June 1 release of
Bing.
An initial report from StatCounter suggested that Bing
had overtaken Yahoo by more than 6 points in U.S. search engine market share during
that first week of release; however, reports by Nielsen and other firms
disputed these findings. A subsequent comScore report found that Microsofts
rate of searcher penetration had increased 1.7 percent, to 15.5 percent, while
its share of search-results pages increased by 2 percent to 11.1 percent during
Bings first week of release.
Google continues to hold a double-digit lead over its
competitors in the search-engine space.
Ballmer also suggested during the conference that IT trends
such as cloud computing would have a substantial impact on other industries,
including Detroits long-suffering automotive-manufacturing base.
"Here in Detroit, the Ford Sync is a great example," Ballmer
said, according to a transcript of the event. "Sync, which was jointly developed
by Ford and Microsoft, gives drivers safe, voice-activated access to music,
communications, the Internet, traffic reports, business listings, news, weather
updates, emergency services, and if they're Aaron Ballmer, age 10, my son,
sports scores."
Microsoft has made previous advances into the vehicle space, notably
with its Microsoft Auto software platform, paired with Intel Atom processors
specially designed for in-vehicle systems, and offering features such as mobile
device integration and speech recognition.
"They're putting high-powered computing in the hands of all
scientists, car designers, energy scientists, you name it," Ballmer
continued. "There are new tools that let us model the physical world
and the virtual world.
And so when we talk about climate science, energy science, new battery
technology, new transportation technology, we are talking about giving
scientists the tools to push forward and solve those problems here in
Detroit
and really around the world."