April 14, 2009

Microsoft's new search engine, Live Search, has gotten off to a slow start, even among company workers who are not widely using the service, an executive says.

CNET News reported Monday that Microsoft Senior Vice President Yusuf Mehdi said the company's share of the search market has been disappointing.

About half of the company's workers -- while on duty -- are still clicking on Google and other portals to conduct their Internet searches, the report said.

Among Microsoft's full-time U.S. workers, Live Search and Google had roughly an equal share of usage for February, at about 48 percent apiece..

"I think some of that is predicated on us talking broadly about some great experiences and promoting it heavily, which is something I think we are going to do soon," Mehdi told CNET.

Microsoft's share of the U.S. search engine market last month was 10.3 percent, compared with 64.2 percent for Google and 15.8 percent for Yahoo, Nielsen Online figures indicate.