Forget about asking Jeeves or winding up the dog at Lycos, the search engine of choice this decade will be decided by whether you ‘Google’ something or make your computer go ‘Bing’.

Like the office junior with a rather rich, influential father, Microsoft-owned Bing has been quietly pleasing the bottom end of the internet hierarchy over the past year, while plotting its dastardly route to the top of the food chain. That’s ‘food chain’- 55,800,000 results on Google, 47,600,000 on Bing. This could prove to be a very long blog…

Bing declared its intent last week on British television screens with the release of the first of  three adverts from their debut television advertising campaign. The premise is based around a woman at Canary Wharf tube station asking for directions to Euston. The responses from the passers-by are in gobbledygook- the point being that search engines make tenuous links to the requests made (hardly a revelation).

The answer? Well, there isn’t one. The advert does not promise Bing will be any better than those currently inside the search engine market but suggests that the viewer has a look at the website anyway.

Microsoft has invested a reported $2 billion to push the series of adverts forward over the next three months so there should be cause for optimism at Bill Gates Towers.

Not only will the viewing public be able to collectively scream the answer to the woman’s predicament at their television sets (take either the Jubilee line to Green Park and change to the Victoria Line or take the Docklands Light Railway to Bank and change to the Northern Line) – but a large proportion may decide to take a leisurely browse of the Bing search engine.

This is especially important as market statistics suggest Bing holds just 3% of the search engine market audience, compared to Google’s 90% stranglehold. Google has become social shorthand for searching the internet- the Bing advert is a reminder that there are other options. Bing not only has to persuade the market of its efficiency- they must also fight against apathy towards their campaign.

Unusually for Microsoft, Bing has been deliberately designed to look more appealing than their market rival according to Ashley Highfield, the managing director of Microsoft UK.

“It is a battle not just of mind but of heart as well,” he said. “We are wanting to make an emotional connection- we are ploughing a different furrow here.”

For example, take Bing and Google’s approach to commemorating St Patrick’s Day yesterday. While Google wrote their name in a Celtic design, Bing filled their home page with a photograph of a row of Irish dancers on a St Patrick’s Day parade. A nice touch perhaps, but will such gimmicks prove enough to radically change online search habits?

Google’s response will be interesting. As Danny Sullivan writes on his blog at searchengineland.com, Google has a reputation for not using advertising campaigns to promote its business, but there have been growing signs that this may be changing.

Last month Google used the world’s prime sports marketing spot, the Super Bowl, to release ‘Parisian Love’, a segment of the Google YouTube series ‘Search Stories’. Whether Bing’s UK presence sparks a Google retaliation on our television screens later this year remains to be seen.

So Bing or Google? Bing declares: ‘Bing and decide’. I say go one better. Try this instead.