Bing takes aim at Google with launch of 'Bing it on' campaign

After each search, the user is presented with two sets of anonymised results and invited to pick which one they prefer or declare a draw. After five rounds either Bing or Google is declare the winner.

Brian Kealy, head of Bing for Microsoft UK, said: "Our research reveals that a huge number of British people do things out of habit – 90 per cent said they would be prepared to break their habit of a lifetime if it provided them with a new experience. We believe one such habit is using Google by default so this campaign aims to show that consumers have a choice for the first time in a long time. We’ve made huge strides with Bing in recent years and Bing is now a genuine challenger to just ‘Googling’ it."

Google currently has a 67 per cent market share, comfortably ahead of Bing's 18 per cent, however Microsoft has claimed that Bing It On has produced favourable results for its browser with 53 per cent preferring Bing compared to 34 per cent who chose Google.

These figures have been cast into doubt by a rival study conducted by Professor Ian Ayres and published by the Freakonomics Blog, which found that 53 per cent of those surveyed preferred Google compared to 41 per cent who preferred Bing.

Ayres further suggested that Microsoft's original results were only favourable towards Bing due to participants picking suggested topics rather than entering their own searches, increasing the possibility that they would pick a topic in which Bing would perform strongly.

Matt Wallaert, Bing's behavioral psychologist, has since refuted this latter claim, pointing out that Bing did not track what searches participants used and underlining the company's commitment to its customers' privacy.

Privacy has been raised by several blogs, including a report last week by the Detroit Free Press last week in which Bing users stated that their preference for the browser stemmed from mistrust of Google's privacy policy.