The Microsoft's ambitious search engine Bing is investing millions of dollars every year to catch up with no.1 search engine giant Google.

Bing has been somewhat successful. Its market share increased to 14.1 percent in July from 11 percent in June, according to comScore.

Microsoft is getting traffic through its search alliance with Yahoo, which now directs queries on its Web sites to Bing. However, Yahoo's own market share is dropping from 18.9 percent in June 2010 to 15.9 percent in June 2011, according to comScore.

Microsoft's search increase in market share is coming at a big cost to the company. Revenue in the Microsoft's Online Services unit, which houses search operations, surged 15 percent year-over-year to $2.53 billion in the latest fiscal year. But the unit's loss got bigger to $2.56 billion over the period, from $2.34 billion a year ago.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has admitted how difficult it is to win over Google at its own game and addressed that the only way to do so is to alter the playing field and do things in a different way. Currently, Microsoft is trying to find a way to move away from the "10 blue links" model.

"For most people, Google is search - they go to Google without even thinking about it. We've got to develop our own habits, of people trying Bing," said Brian MacDonald from Microsoft's Core Search Program Management.

Google's market share increased by 4.6 percentage points to 65.5 percent in July. For global mark share, the gap between Bing and Google seems to be even bigger. Google global share was 83 percent while Bing had merely 3.76 percent as of July 2011, according to Net Applications.

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