Research reported by StatCounter says that Microsoft’s new Bing search engine has taken over Yahoo for the second place slot in search market share. Clearly, it’s getting a lot of attention since it just launched, so let’s keep this in context.

"It remains to be seen if Bing falls away after the initial novelty and promotion but at first sight it looks like Microsoft is on to a winner," says StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen. "Steve Ballmer is quoted as saying that he wanted Microsoft to become the second biggest search engine within five years. Following the breakdown in talks to acquire Yahoo! at a cost of $40bn it looks as if he may have just achieved that with Bing much sooner and a lot cheaper than anticipated."

According to StatCounter, in the US Bing reached 16.28% of market share, with Yahoo at 10.22%, and Google still sitting comfortably at 71.47%. On a global scale, StatCounter data finds that Bing at 5.62% has taken a smaller lead over Yahoo! (5.13%), with Google sitting at 87.62%.

There is no doubt that many people who normally use Google (or even Yahoo) have used a Bing a little within the past week (myself included), but clearly not all of them are going to abandon their Google habits in favor of Bing. It will be very interesting to see how this pans out once the initial hype dies down.

The real question is whether or not Microsoft’s big marketing budget will pay off in Bing usage. Clearly brand is the biggest obstacle Microsoft has been trying to clear for years in terms of search. You can check out a couple of the new Bing commercials here.