For a brief shining moment on Thursday, Steve Ballmer's quest for Bing to become the number-two search engine was achieved. Microsoft's Bing.com search engine surpassed Yahoo to second-place in searching on Thursday, though preliminary results from Friday put it back in third place.
In the United States, Bing captured 15.64 percent of searches, ahead of Yahoo's 10.32 percent, according to data from StatCounter. Globally, Bing had 5.56 percent of searches, still slightly ahead of Yahoo, which was at 5.17 percent.
Google still dominated searches on Thursday, with 71.99 percent in the U.S. and 87.66 percent worldwide.
As of Friday morning, however, Bing and Yahoo were battling it out for search dominance in the U.S.
Yahoo bested Bing with 10.75 percent of searches compared to Bing's 10.08 percent. Globally, Yahoo had a bigger lead, with 5.55 percent of searches compared to Bing's 3.73 percent.
Microsoft unveiled Bing at the D7 conference last week in California. A preview version of the site went live on June 1 and it made its formal debut on June 3.Interest in Bing fluctuated throughout the week. In the U.S., Bing captured 5.52 percent out of the gate on June 1 and jumped to 9.13 percent the next day. By Wednesday, it dropped slightly to 8.4 percent but jumped to 15.64 on Thursday, the day after the launch.
Global statistics were similar, starting the week at 2.07 percent, experiencing a slight dip on Wednesday and reaching its all-time high of 5.56 percent on Thursday.
"It remains to be seen if Bing falls away after the initial novelty and promotion but at first sight it looks like Microsoft is on to a winner," Aodhan Cullen, CEO of StatCounter, said in a statement.
