search market

China without Google -- a prospect that looks increasingly likely -- could mean no more maps on mobile phones. A free music service that has helped to fight piracy might be in jeopardy. China's fledgling Web outfits would face less pressure to improve, eroding their ability to one day compete abroad.

China's top Internet regulator insisted Friday that Google must obey its laws or "pay the consequences," giving no sign of a possible compromise in their dispute over censorship and hacking.

"If you want to do something that disobeys Chinese law and regulations, you are unfriendly, you are irresponsible and you will have to pay the consequences," Li Yizhong, the minister of Industry and Information Technology, said on the sidelines of China's annual legislature.

The search-engine wars are alive and well -- and Bing is the beneficiary again. Microsoft's so-called decision engine grabbed 11.5 percent of the U.S. search market in February, according to comScore.

Although that's only a slight increase over January, when Bing boasted 11.3 percent of the search market, it's an incremental improvement Microsoft is glad to see for its less-than-a-year-old engine.

Google is being probed by the European Commission for antitrust behavior. EC officials confirmed Wednesday that the Internet search giant is under investigation after a trio of companies filed complaints against Google.

The complaints came from Foundem, a price-comparison web site; French legal search site Ejustice; and Ciao from Bing, a search site operated by Microsoft.

Google is being probed by the European Commission for antitrust behavior. EC officials confirmed Wednesday that the Internet search giant is under investigation after a trio of companies filed complaints against Google.

The complaints came from Foundem, a price-comparison web site; French legal search site Ejustice; and Ciao from Bing, a search site operated by Microsoft.

Microsoft's decision engine hit a wall Thursday. Bing.com suffered an outage lasting half an hour, during which some users were unable to get to the site while those who reached the site didn't receive any results from their queries.

Microsoft's Satya Nadella, vice president of online services, said the outage was due to a configuration change during internal testing.

Bing is up. Yahoo is down. Google still dominates. That's the latest story line from comScore. The market-research firm just issued its October U.S. search-engine rankings.

Not surprisingly, Google's share of the search-engine market continues to grow. Google earned 65.4 percent of the market in October, compared to 64.9 percent in September, according to comScore.

Google Inc. is giving Web surfers a few more ways to refine their search results, signaling its resolve to ward off rival Microsoft Corp.'s aggressive campaign to lure traffic.

The changes announced Thursday might be hard to notice because they require clicking on a "show options" link above Google's search results. The feature has been around since May, making it possible to focus the results exclusively on videos, discussion forums, reviews or books. Now news and blogs are joining the list of options.

After a bang and a boom, Bing bounced down the search-market charts in September. Bing's monthly market share in the U.S. and globally has fallen for the first time since its launch, according to an analysis by Web analytics firm StatCounter.

StatCounter Global Stats, the firm's research arm, revealed that Bing's share of the U.S. search market in September fell more than one percentage point in September, to 8.51 percent from 9.64 percent in August.

Month after month, Bing continues to gain momentum in the search-engine market. Microsoft's so-called decision engine is rising up the comScore ratings percentage point by percentage point -- last month seemingly at Google's expense.

On Tuesday, comScore released its monthly qSearch analysis of the U.S. search marketplace, and with it more good news for Bing.