On Friday Eric Schmidt, Google chief executive assumed that the company's main threat was Microsoft’s Bing search engine, not Face book or Apple.

In Wall Street Journal interview video posted online Schmidt said that though its true web search is not the just game in town, penetrating information is what it is all about.

He describes Apple as a well-respected competitor and Face book as a “in social networking company of corollary doing an excellent job," but said that Google's main competition was Microsoft's latest-generation search engine.

Presenting to Facebook and Apple Schmidt said that we consider neither to be a competitive threat. Entirely, Bing is our competitor. It is a well-run, highly competitive search engine.

According to The Nielsen Co, “Microsoft's Bing and other internet search services overtook Yahoo! for the first time to become the number two search engine in the United States in August”.

Nielsen said that in August Microsoft's Bing, MSN and Windows Live had a 13.9 per cent share of US search volume, up 0.25 per cent from July, whereas Yahoo! had a 13.1 per cent share of US internet searches, down from 14.6 per cent in July.