Microsoft products tend to be widely used and rarely praised. Messaging platform Teams lacks the rave reviews of rival Slack, for example. Unlike Google, search engine Bing has not become shorthand for online queries.
Launched in 2009, Bing’s name is supposed to emulate the feeling of getting an answer right. This feeling is not reflected in the service’s own market share. Google is estimated to have more than four-fifths of the search engine market. In second place, Bing has less than a tenth.
Yet a small slice of the search advertising market is still a sizeable business. In the three months to September 30, Microsoft reported $2.9bn in revenue for search and news advertising, up 10 per cent on the previous year.