Microsoft announced on Thursday its Bing search engine, a decision engine that will replace live.com worldwide as of June 3. If successful, it is excepted to change the face of search engineer market, said Forrester analyst Shar VanBoskirck.

Most advertisers today buy search ads just with Google and Yahoo because Microsoft has a measly 8% share of searches,” commented VanBoskirck, “not enough reach to make buying search ads with Microsoft worth the trouble. Forrester expects Bing to change that.”

A distant third place in the search engine game, Microsoft hopes that this engine will help it gain more searcher share by delivering results and content more relevant to how users actually search. It will spend a reported $80 million to $100 million on an advertising campaign to familiarize consumers with the brand.

In addition to the ad campaign, Microsoft is bringing over its Cashback Rewards program, rebranded as Bing Cashback. Hitwise has indicated previously that this program, which pays people to use Live Search, is working well. Coupled with a better search engine, Microsoft finally starts to snatch search market share from Google.

Microsoft research shows (and Forrester's research affirms) that users rely more and more on search engines to deliver solutions, such as hotel reservations, movie listings, gift ideas, etc. Bing was developed to help consumers make decisions, not just to catalog content.

With the emerging of Bing, search engines will become information portals. “Search engines have long been used as gateways to Web content. But as a decisioning engine, Bing introduces a search engine that actually delivers Web content without sending users away to other destination sites.” Said VanBoskirck, “Marketers should expect increased costs for search and display ads. We also expect online media planners to adjust the sites where they buy. We expect consumers to frequent Bing (and other similar search engines in its wake) instead of other portals (Yahoo) and preferred destination sites.

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