The Internet has been watching carefully as Microsoft’s much-touted (and much-marketed) Bing search engine tries to take on Google in the Internet search marketplace…and, at least initially, Bing seems to be gaining followers, even if a good portion of its gains appear to be coming at the expense of new partner Yahoo. Now, however, Web analytics firm StatCounter finds that Bing’s initial honeymoon with the Internet search market may be coming to an end: StatCounter shows Bing’s share of the U.S. search market actually declined by over one percent in September, the first time Bing has lost share since it was loudly launched.
“The trend has been downwards for Bing since mid August,” commented StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen, in a statement. “The wheels haven’t fallen off but the underlying trend must be a little worrying for Microsoft.”
StatCounter found that Bing’s share of the U.S. search market shrunk from 9.64 percent in August to 8.51 percent in September; globally, Bing’s decline was less several but still in a downward direction, dipping from 3.58 percent to 3.25 percent.
Microsoft’s partner Yahoo also saw search share declines. In the United States, Yahoo dropped from a 10.5 percent in August to 9.4 percent in September; globally, Yahoo’s share slipped from 4.84 percent to 4.37 percent.
The main beneficiary of these declined appears to be—you guessed it—Google, which saw its share of the U.S. search market include to 80.08 percent in September from 77.83 percent in August. Globally, Google accounted for a whopping 90.54 percent of the search market.
StatCounter bases its analysis of some 4.6 referring click-throughs from sites running StatCounter services; while StatCounter is a well-established Wb analytics firm, sites using its services may not be representative of the Internet as a whole. Different Web analysis firms use different methodologies: some have sample pools of Web users, some perform automated tracking and hit analysis, some do a bit of both. It’s a measure of how different the methodologies are—and how diverse the Internet can be—that things like search share numbers from major tracking firms rarely display more than a general agreement. However, StatCounter is the first to claim an actual decline for Bing’s search share in the U.S. or globally.
In 1950, Alan Turing asked whether machines can think. Rather than argue over definitions, he turned the question into a party game, where an interrogator trades typed messages with hidden players and tries to work out who is who. Since then, chatbots have gotten so good that they have already fooled humans in modern versions of the test.
So, four researchers from Paris Cité University asked the obvious follow-up question in a new study published in Computers in Human Behavior Reports: can AI at least catch its own kind?
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.