Happy Birthday Bing!

Now one-year old, Microsoft’s revamped search engine Bing has quickly secured an impressive share of the market. 

 In its first year, Microsoft managed to go from about 8 percent market share to 12.7 percent as of June, according to Comscore. That gain is significant, although the company spent a fortune to get there using both heavy advertising and pricey distribution deals that make Bing the search engine default on new PCs from Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and others. Our toolbar deals played a significant role in getting us users,” acknowledged senior vice president Satya Nadella.

Microsoft will release its first full-featured Bing search client for Android in the next six weeks, matching the search capabilities that Microsoft offers for the iPhone, company executives said Tuesday.

Mobile is clearly an opportunity for Bing’s future growth. Microsoft already offers a basic Bing client for Android, but it’s geared mainly toward mapping tasks. The new client will have features similar to those in the desktop version of Bing.com, including full Web, image and news search – look for it in about six weeks.

Clearly one big task for Nadella and team will be the integration with Yahoo under the search partnership reached last year. This fall, Microsoft is due to start supplying both algorithmic and paid search results for Yahoo’s site, though Nadella said that the companies are further along on the former than they are on the latter front.