Bing Ireland. Google v Yahoo v Bing, Microsofts Bing overtakes Yahoo, as the number two search engine in the United States and worldwide Thursday 4th June according to data from StatCounter Global Stats. StatCounter says that Bing grabbed market share from Google.

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, commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. Steve Ballmer is quoted as saying that he wanted Microsoft to become the second biggest search engine within five years.

Following the breakdown in talks to acquire Yahoo! at a cost of USD40bn it looks as if he may have just achieved that with Bing much sooner and a lot cheaper than anticipated.

StatCounters analysis for Thursday finds that in the US Bing leapfrogged Yahoo to take second place on 16.28percen. Google still commands the US search engine market with 71.47 per cent. StatCounter data globally finds that Bing at 5.62 per cent a narrow lead over Yahoo,5.13 per cent worldwide retains 87.62pr cent market. 

In March it launched StatCounter Global Stats, a free online service which captures market share battles of search engines, browsers and operating systems including mobile. The StatCounter Global Stats research data is based on four billion pageloads worldwide.