Judging from the way the media has been covering Microsoft's new search engine, Bing.com, over the last few weeks, you'd think that we were in the middle of the biggest race for online market share since the browser wars of the early 1990s.
Last week the coverage really heated up. Conflicting reports have been coming in from the companies that monitor web traffic that say Bing is and isn't chipping away at the market leader, Google, and Microsoft's announcement that it will now provide search results for recent Twitter posts has certainly grabbed people's attention.
Frankly, the whole "race" has been about as exciting as watching paint dry, and at this point even the concept that Bing, which launched just four weeks ago, is already a serious threat to Google is a bit of a joke. Google is still the dominate search engine out there and will likely remain that way for the foreseeable future.
The only question that matters is whether Microsoft will be able to continue to substantially grow and maintain its market share, but it will be months - or probably more like a couple of years - before we're able to see if that is happening.
You have to give Microsoft some credit though. They are doing the one thing they really need to do, which is make sure that people know about Bing. Most people - myself included - go to Google just out of habit. It's been there for 12 years, and my fingers start to type in the URL as soon as my brains realises that I want to look for something.
It's going to be hard for Microsoft to break that habit, so getting people aware that's there is an all-important first step. That, and perhaps getting people to ignore all those Google search boxes that seem appear everywhere you go online.
Microsoft is also going to have to start backing up what it says, especially when it announces plans for handling hot sites like Twitter. If their attempt at providing popular search results doesn't work as advertised, the word will quickly get out on the web and they will be branded with that ubiquitous internet condemnation: fail.
The word is certainly out on Google's news service. Type in Bing there and at the top of the list is a story posted by PC Magazine on Thursday titled: Bing Builds an Underwhelming Twitter Search.
Curiously, that story doesn't appear anywhere in Bing's news search, so either the site wasn't able to find it or Microsoft's new search engine is resistant to anti-Bing press. Neither explanation is good.
I tried a Twitter search myself. When I looked for my Twitter account - sdshuey - on Bing, I was presented with a staggering three results. Bing wasn't even able to find my account.
Google found over 50 different sites for the same search, including my account, my friend's accounts, and a number of sites that reposted my previous Tweets.
Now I recognise that my Twitter account is far from being well followed - I would actually have to use it more for that to happen - but this is how I judge search engines. I expect you to be able to find the popular stuff. It's how well you find the obscure stuff that determines whether or not I use any search engine on a regular basis. And so far, Google has that fight won.
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