Bing's Big Week

Well, that didn't take long. PC World reports that just one day after formally launching its new "decision engine" Bing, Microsoft (MSFT) has overtaken Yahoo (YHOO) to rank second among the most used online search engines in America. According to the Web analytics firm StatCounter, Bing grabbed 16.28 percent of all searches in the country, doubling the share Microsoft Live Search had just a week earlier. Yahoo, meanwhile, has dropped from 18 percent to 10.22 percent.Forrester Research analyst Shar VanBoskirk told PC World that because both Bing and Yahoo combine content and search, it's only natural that Yahoo would be hit by the new competition first.

Of course, it's too early to say anything about Bing's chances; most users are likely just giving taking it out for a spin right now. But Microsoft is pushing hard to take advantage of the buzz, renting the Space Needle for its launch party and releasing the first commercials in its reported $100 million ad campaign to unseat Google (GOOG):

Analyst and Microsoft fan Joe Wilcox told ChannelWeb that this emphasis on the deficiencies of keywords will be a central part of Microsoft's campaign to convince users that Google's search service was too slow and inefficient after all: "Keywords are a point of vulnerability for Google and they're also a problem for consumers. People often don't get what they want quickly enough."