Can Bing Become the Default Search Engine?

ABC’s Zach Fannin and Kristi Berner report:

Microsoft is reportedly spending about $100 million dollars to market its new "decision engine," Bing. So with all the marketing and media buzz, does Bing have even a slim chance of catching up with Google in the search world?

"It’s a long journey," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told our Charlie Gibson yesterday. "We’ll have to see how people react, but we’re committed and persistent."

Charlie mentioned Google has about an 8-to-1 advantage in number of searches over Microsoft’s current search engine, Live. "Can Bing become the default search engine?" he asked.

"We’re not going to go from 1-to-8 to 8-to-1in a short amount of time," Ballmer said. "This is a grind, it’s innovation. It doesn’t just flip overnight."

"But we hope a number of people are going to say, ‘Bing, man. That’s the way to go.’"

For the third part of Charlie’s webcam interview with Ballmer, and his answer to the Yahoo merger question, check out this video.