Google has long been the Goliath of search, but Microsoft Corp. hopes its new entry in the search engine market will be the new “David” to challenge the company and grab market share from it.

 

Microsoft (News - Alert) is reportedly spending $80 million to $100 million on a new ad campaign for its search engine, which is set to launch next month under the name Bing, one of many rumored names for Microsoft’s new Live Search. The ad campaign, which agency JWT is developing, will focus on the notion that current search engines don’t work as well as consumers previously thought, Advertising Age (News - Alert) said. Instead, Microsoft hopes to give consumers a reason to switch search engines, the report said.

 

The ad blitz will include print media, online platforms, TV commercials and outdoor media—more than triple the $25 million Google (News - Alert) spent on advertising in 2008, according to the report.

 

The new search engine, which Microsoft has tested privately for months, is designed to better organize search results and minimize the amount of time people spend clicking Web pages searching for information, according to a Wall Street Journal report.  

 

What will Microsoft offer that Google doesn’t?

 

"We believe we can provide a better and more useful search experience that helps you not just search but accomplish tasks," Satya Nadella (News - Alert), senior vice president and head of engineering for Microsoft's Online Services Division, wrote to employees in an e-mail obtain by ChannelWeb.

 

Microsoft already is facing an uphill battle against the Google giant. The latest comScore numbers, released last week show Google increasing its share to 64.2 percent of searches in the U.S. in April, versus and 20.4 percent for Yahoo and 8.2 percent for Microsoft.

 

"It doesn't take a lot to switch people from one type to another and usually it's a unique feature that gets people excited," David Karnstedt, CEO of Efficient Frontier and former head of sales for Yahoo,” told Advertising Age. "Google got people excited because it got people and places right early on. That got people to really start to switch, and once developed the habit of using Google, it was hard to get them to switch back."

 

Details of the new search engine are slated to be released this week at the D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, California, according to a CNET report.

 

As TMC (News - Alert) recently reported, Microsoft has been testing a search engine under the name Kumo, which means "cloud" or "spider” in Japanese.  But whether the name will stick remains to be seen.

 

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office reportedly has rejected Microsoft’s filing of “Bing” as a trademark name for “computer search engine software; graphical user interface software, namely, toolbar software for use with search engine software and Web sites,” according to a Livesite.net report. A similar mark, which is registered to Bing Mobile, Inc., is too similar, the report said.

 

Larry Dignan, Editor in Chief of ZDNet, wrote in a blog that “there’s no burning reason to switch to another search engine—unless Google screws up.” And Google’s recent server outages may give users a reason to search elsewhere.

 

Earlier this month, Google users were without Google News and e-mail for about an hour. The company explained it was forced to direct some of its Web traffic through Asia, which caused the traffic jam. As a result, 14 percent of Google users experienced “slow services, or even interruptions.”

 

Then, a day later, Google users experienced a second round of outages, leaving many people frustrated and searching for alternate search engines. The outages came on the heels of Google unveiling some new features meant to help Web surfers with complex searches.

 

Last year, new search engine, “Cuil” (pronounced “cool”) emerged. As TMC reported, Culi was the brainchild of former Google engineers. It was the latest challenger to try to capture users from Google.