Sure Microsoft still has a long way to go with regards to marketshare of Internet Search. The recent growth in marketshare is related to very creative relations between online games and Search according to the article quoted below.
… No Dumb Clucks: Microsoft Boosts Search Share With Chicken Game
SEATTLE (AP) — Microsoft, long stuck in third place behind Google and Yahoo in the search wars, suddenly boosted its share of the market last month by playing a shrewd game of chicken.
Microsoft Corp.’s search share climbed to 13.2 percent in June, a whopping gain of nearly 3 percentage points over the prior month, according to research group comScore data. The company’s improvement came at the expense of Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., which both saw share decline more than 1 percent.
But it wasn’t the quality of Microsoft’s search results that encouraged people to type over 300 million more queries into Microsoft search boxes in June.
It was Chicktionary.
The chicken-themed letter scramble puzzle is one of several addictive Live Search Club games designed to introduce Web users to features of Microsoft’s Live Search engine.
When a player enters a word formed from three or more letters displayed by a clucky group of hens, the game automatically triggers a related Web search. A single game of Chicktionary can add 35 or more queries to Microsoft’s monthly total, even if the player isn’t paying attention to the results. …
Source: biz.yahoo.com
