Bing is the latest in a somewhat long line of Microsoft search engines, Bing’s predecessors were Live.com, Windows Live, and MSN.com. The original MSN.com search engine launched in 1998 and featured search results provided by Inktomi. Through 1999 Microsoft used Inktomi, Inktomi mixed with LookSmart results, and for a period AltaVista, to power their search results. Starting from 1999, Microsoft began providing results, using its own in-house designed search engine.

Bing itself launched in 2006. Microsoft, desperate to capture market share from Google needed control of its own algorithm driven search.  Today Microsoft is at war with Google in a fight to gain control of an ever larger piece of the PPC market. Perhaps, not in the same way as they took market share from Netscape in the 90’s. Certainly without the competitive advantage their Windows operating system of that era provided.

Goggle is not sitting still. They have their own operating system (Android), their own suite of office applications (Google Apps), their own browser (Chrome), which many prefer over Internet Explorer. They actually have one of the two most popular operating systems for mobile smart phones and tablet PCs (Android).

It’s a battle raging on at this time, and the stakes are high. Consider that for some years Google has controlled approximately 64% of total search market share while Microsoft with Its Bing and as of 2011 Yahoo search engines control 30%. It will be interesting to watch in the coming years to see how things play out between these two cash rich companies. At stake is a larger portion of the $32 billion annual ad revenue Google brought in during fiscal year 2010 and 2011 attributed to Adwords.