Microsoft Hopes To Redefine Competition In An Effort To Take-on Search Giant Google (MSFT, GOOG, YHOO)

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer, with his first hand experience in a near Monopoly Market hopes to take on Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) in the field where it dominates. He understands that there is only one way to approach a competitor in a field where it is dominant in and that is to jump in and redefine the field.

Microsoft hopes that its recent changes to its search engine bing.com, is enough to give Google some competition. According to Ballmer, the changes that they have applied revolve around anticipating the needs of the user before the search and giving them seamless access to it within the search experience.
In Bing.com if a person puts in Atlanta in the search engine, the search engine provides the usual internet links but with the results is an entity card that may contain slideshows of the city, local weather, and even flight information. Once those choices are clicked, it brings the user to a task page within Bing.

The Bing search engine allows the user to remain in the website while still working, opening the window for advertisers to get into contact with the consumers. This few minutes is substantially more that the few seconds that people spend while in Google.
Early statistics are promising with Microsoft getting 9.9% of the market share. This marks a 1.9% increase in market share in the last six months. Statistics also show that their product is gaining ground in the younger market.

Shares of Microsoft have gone down in the previous day’s trading with 0.77% loss with prices falling to $29.78 a share. Google shares also went down, falling 0.40% to $587.51 a share. Another competitor in search, Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) , went up 1.19% to $15.31 a share.