I was humored by the clever ads that Microsoft has been running about Bing on the radio in the Boston market the other day. They essentially involve one person asking another a fairly simple question. The second person then responds with a series of completely un-related answers.

But as I was listening to it, I kept thinking that just maybe this was a classic case of solving a problem I didn’t know I had. Even after they told me I had the problem, I am not sure that I really care. And when the paradigm is set as firmly as it is with Google, I am really not sure any amount of marketing is going to have a measureable impact.

This B2B Magazine article has some early stats from the launch showing a tiny gain in search from 7.81% t o8.23%. I am left wondering if the execs in Redmond are dancing a jig that they picked up 40 basis points?  Even considering they stole those from Google’s over 78% it still seems they are running a distant third.  I wonder what their goals for this were? Break 10%? Surpass Yahoo?

I did try Bing when I was looking for something particularly difficult the other day, didn’t seem to help me anymore than Google.  But hey, they can always work with this post from someone I follow on Twitter:

@bpearce76: Is anyone else drawn to Bing just because of the pretty pictures? Love to see what pops up each day.

I think they are in trouble.