So far, Google has been the household name for internet search. We even used the search engine’s name as a verb for searching (i.e. Google it.) Now, could you imagine saying “Just Bing it” by 2012? This is because Microsoft’s search engine has been performing well for the past 6 months and if you’ll do the math, come next year and Google might face some real competition unlike anything before.

Research data coming from Experian Hitwise shows that for March 2011, while Google comprises of 64.42% of all US searches, Bing accounts for 30% — including search.yahoo.com and bing.com. That number represents a significant boost in Bing-powered searches and at the rate things are going, it will still climb.

Let’s backtrack further. Experian Hitwise did the same research for September 2010 and it showed that Google has 72.15% of US searches with Bing-powered ones covered 23.64%. At the moment, Google still has 2/3 of the overall search pie but taking consideration that prior, Google has 3/4 of that same pie, Bing is definitely growing. So if the same curve continues to 2012, here’s how things will look like (again, this is projected and may definitely change due to varying circumstances):

The above graph is a projection assuming the recent conditions that Google’s market share is steadily dropping by 3% each month while Bing’s is rising by 5%. At this rate, Bing will overtake Google’s position in internet search in less than a year’s time. While these are all projected, what certain is Bing is on the right path here. Maybe we’ll return to the era when Yahoo! and Google are battling out which search is better, unlike the Google-monopoly we have today.