Is Bing Creating A Crisis Of Faith In Google Co-Founder?

Brin is reportedly leading a group of Google engineers assembled to dissect Bing's algorithms, according to a report in The New York Post.

The co-founder usually does not get directly involved in such operations, which may signal his concerns about Bing, the paper said, quoting an anonymous company source.

"New search engines have come and gone in the past 10 years, but Bing seems to be of particular interest to Sergey," the source told The New York Post.

Not one to show its cards, Google is downplaying any worries it may have that Bing could usurp Google's No.1 spot in the search engine market.

"We always have a team working on improving search," a company told the paper. We dedicate more time and energy to search than anything else in our company. Our algorithm is constantly evolving."

Since its launch two weeks ago, Bing has attracted interest from online users and the media. Last week, Internet traffic tracking firm ComScore said that the new search engine's daily penetration among U.S. searchers was 15.5 percent during the June 2-6 time period, up from 13.8 percent between May 26 and May 30 for Microsoft's earlier generation Live Search. In addition, Bing's share of search engine results climbed to 11.1 percent from 9.1 percent for Live Search during those time periods.

Last week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt shot down any concerns that Bing would overtake Google's dominance in the search engine arena.

"It's not the first entry for Microsoft," Schmidt told Fox Business News in an interview last Tuesday. "They do this about once a year. I don't think Bing's arrival has changed what we're doing. We are about search; we're about making things enormously successful, by virtue of innovation."

Bing's early penetration in the search engine market may not necessarily mean that it is a superior service, but could be due to its novelty factor, according to ComScore.

"These initial data suggest that Microsoft Bing has generated early interest, resulting in a spike in search engagement and an immediate-term improvement to Microsoft's position in the search market," said Mike Hurt, senior vice president at ComScore, in a statement.