HispanicBusiness

It appears Bing has started with a bang.

Not even a week after its official launch, Microsoft's new search engine has already sailed past Yahoo, according to StatCounter Global Stats, a company that tracks the market share of search engines.

This means Bing is the No. 2 search engine in the United States, behind the implacable Google, which still enjoys a vast lead over any and all competitors.

"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," said Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter, in a statement. "Steve Ballmer is quoted as saying that he wanted Microsoft to become the second-biggest search engine within five years. ... It looks as if he may have just achieved that with Bing much sooner and a lot cheaper than anticipated."

Bing's U.S. market share as of Thursday amounted to 16.3 percent, knocking Yahoo into third place at 10.2 percent, according to StatCounter's analysis. Google still rules the roost, with 71.5 percent.

In a nutshell, Microsoft wants Bing to be used as a noun, a verb and a brand name -- just like we've come to use Google. In doing so, it attempts to be every bit the search engine that Google is, and then some. The "then some," in this case, is what the company refers to as a "decision engine."

This means Bing, which replaces the drably named Live Search, is attempting to help people to not only find what is out there, but also make decisions about which restaurants to select, which hotels to reserve, which plane tickets to purchase, and so on.

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Bing also surpassed Yahoo globally, but not as dramatically. Bing captured 5.6 percent of the market, inching past Yahoo's 5.1 percent. But across globe, Google's lead is gargantuan; it retains 87.6 percent of the search market.