For the last 5 days Bing, the new Decision/Search Engine from Microsoft, has made it’s rounds on all the typical media outlets and many people have tried it out. But what is really surprising is that Google is feeling threatened by Bing and rightly so.

Today for the first time in a long time Yahoo is in 3rd place according to StatCounter and Bing has taken the coveted 2nd place. Most of Bing’s market share appears to be taken from Google and I am sure that does not make them happy. Maybe Microsoft does not need to worry about buying Yahoo anymore.

UPDATE 6/8/2009: It looks like bing’s 2nd position was just a fluke. Over the weekend they fell back to 3rd place at 6.04% of the market share. As time progresses I am sure that the competition will help to kick both Google and Yahoo into gear making their products better.

Check It Out> TechCrunch, Bing

Despite my being a little critical of Microsoft sometimes I like to give them a very fair chance to prove themselves. As part of that I have decided to change all of my Internet searching over to the new Microsoft Search engine “Bing”. It’s official date if launch is still 2 days away but is available now in many parts of the world.

Bing is Microsoft’s latest attempt to grab a larger portion of the Search Engine market. At this point it appears as if it is more than a re-branded “Live.com” even though Live now redirects to Bing.com. There are many subtle changes and a few bing ones that actually make Bing very usable and an upgrade to Google.

One of my favorite new features is the search history bar on the left side of the page.  It can be very useful when you search multiple times for the same things. There is also a very unobtrusive page preview option that is easy to use and shows a nice summary of the pages content. This is much better when compared to the random paragraph that Google displays.

Even if you are in love with Google now is a good time to try Bing.

There has been a lot of speculation that Microsoft’s new ad campaign has been working to convince people that Windows machines are a better value.  If in fact this is true it would be the first time in recent history that Microsoft’s ads are out performing Apple’s.

The actual data itself is very interesting and shows that Microsoft is making an impact on people aged 18 to 34.

Based on daily interviews of 5,000 people, BrandIndex found the age group gave Apple its highest rating in late winter, when it notched a value score of 70 on a scale of -100 to 100 (a score of zero means that people are giving equal amounts of positive and negative feedback about a brand). But its score began to fall shortly after and, despite brief rallies, hovers around 12.4 today.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has risen from near zero in early February to a value-perception score of 46.2.

That kind of shift especially in the age range most likely to support them, is a big win for Microsoft.  They originally received a lot of criticism for their campaign of a “normal” person when it turned out she was hired actress.  Looking back on it I am sure that Microsoft would do it exactly the same all over again.

Check It Out> Advertising Age

The mobile phone market is really heating up and it looks like Android has been able to capture 5% of the mobile OS market in the US.  This is according to a report that AdMob released yesterday regarding the traffic they are seeing.  AdMob is an advertising agency that caters to mobile devices and as such this is more of a guideline to follow rather than a definitive statistic.

JkOnTheRun thinks that this is a high point for Android and that in the future it will struggle to capture a larger portion of the mobile OS market.  This is based on the Palm Pre coming out soon and Apple continuing to ramp up it’s iPhone platform.  This way of thinking is not taking into account all of the other mobile operating systems out there.  Palm and Apples platforms only account for 57% of the mobile OS market on the Internet.

Phones that use other operating systems such as Symbian really do not have the greatest of Internet usage rates out there because the phones are not fun to use on the Internet.  Have you ever tried using a standard mobile phone to browse the Internet?  It is a horrible experience and you tend to only do it as a last resort or when you are bored.  Platforms such as the iPhone and Android actually make browsing the Internet easy and a good experience.

While Palms webOS is for sure going to capture a large part of the mobile OS market I do not think that it is going to be coming from the Android or iPhone shares.  It will be coming from the other platforms that are now slipping into the abyss of the uninteresting.

Check It Out> AdMob (pdf), JkOnTheRun via UMPC

Steve Balmer the CEO of Microsoft announced earlier this week that Windows Mobile 7 will be released next year.  This does not come as a surprise to anyone that pays attention to the Windows Mobile news but when you step back and look at the economy and mobile market is this a wise thing to do?

Microsoft delayed Windows Vista for an abnormally long time and I am sure they learned their lesson that it is foolish to delay a major OS update for such a long time.  But at the other side of things is it a good idea to rush out another version too quickly?  I am actually not talking about Windows Mobile 7 here but actually version 6.5 which is set to release in the last half of this year.

Currently Microsoft spends $900 million a year on Windows Mobile and under normal conditions that might be acceptable.  By “normal conditions” I am not talking about the economy but the state of the cell phone market.  So many different companies are introducing high-end phones that are impressive and Microsoft keeps bringing the same OS with a different skin on it.  Microsoft really needs to take their mobile OS more seriously and stop re-skinning it.  $900 million a year just to release a new skin for it seems excessively high and I am sure they could get it done for $1 million if they gave the guys over at Deviant Art a shot at it.

The only way that Microsoft will be able to maintain relevance is to follow in Palm’s footsteps and dump the old OS and start from the ground up…. with Linux.

Check It Out> WMpoweruser

Freescale is aiming at a $100-$200 price point for the Netbooks and their primary focus for the operating system is.. wait for it…. Android!  They want to use Google Android to power their Netbooks due to it’s low system requirements.  This is really starting to be quite the trend with companies making devices running Android.  While it is good for phones will it be sufficient for a Netbook?

Current Netbooks primarily use the Atom processor which is more powerful and averages about 4 hours of battery life.  By comparison the ARM processor is aiming for an average of 8 hours of battery life.  This could be a good opportunity for Freescale to get into the game and of course be good for consumers to get computers cheaper when they have less money to spend.

Check It Out> eWeek via OSnews, Freescale

With the beginning of a new month comes the previous months operating system usage report.  There is no surprise here that Windows 7 made it’s first appearance on the list and Mac OS X jumped forward yet again.  Linux slid backwards a little bit but I still stand by my prediction that they will gain a much larger market share in the future.

Overall Microsoft slipped backwards despite Windows 7 gaining market share,  most of this went to OS X and iPod Touch.  Not only did the Touch get some additional market share but they jumped 34.5% from the previous month to a total of 0.11%.  I suspect Microsoft to continue to lose market share until Windows 7 is released.  Vista is not getting any more popular and Apple will continue to increase until Netbooks/Instant-on become more popular.

Check It Out> Cnet, Net Applications