According to StatCounter, Bing has become the number two search service in the U.S. and also the world. Yahoo Search dropped to number three as Bing has gained over 16% of the market share in just a few days.
There are a couple of theories about this.
- People are just trying it out.
With the release of any new service that’s promoted as heavily as Bing, there’s sure to be a surge in use from people who are just curious. Only time will tell if this is the case or if Bing can retain its new users. - Bing was Forced on people still using IE6.
According to TechCrunch:“The Next Web reports that users of Internet Explorer 6 are being forced to use Bing as their default search engine — even if they’ve manually switched their preference to another search provider, like Google. Attempts to switch the browser to something other than Bing result in an error message.”
Whether or not microsoft receives backlash from this move, it’s an interesting marketing tactic. It’s a strange coincidence that IE6 users account for roughly the same number of users that Bing has gained…
This might be one more good reason for people to upgrade from IE6, not that Bing is bad I just don’t like the thought of forcing people to use it.
And anyways it seems to me if you know how to change your default search engine in your browser, then you should know how to upgrade your browser, no?