Gasta Tech News: Balmer on Bing Innovations

Ballmer sees Bing reinventing search
By Rich Cherecwich

Bing increased its share of the U.S. search market again in September, growing from 8.7 percent to 8.8 percent, The New York Times reports. That's a small move, but Bing's search volume increased by more than 8 percent during the same month, while nearly every other search engine saw its volume decline, according to data from Compete.

Bing has increased its market share every month since launching, and parent company Microsoft is taking steps to ensure that growth continues. The company reached a deal with Twitter earlier this week that will let Bing incorporate tweets into searches.

But Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer knows Bing has a much longer road to get ahead of market leader Google, and he plans on getting there by "radically reinventing the category." Ballmer didn't lay out any specific details, but in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, he hinted that Bing has some search innovations in the pipeline. "We're going to do things that surprise [Google], and they're going to hustle to catch back up and copy us," he said.