Microsoft’s press release: “The ads aim to inform the public of Bing’s role in helping searchers make more informed decisions, and contrasts other search products with the simple, integrated and instantaneous answers that Bing produces. Each ad features someone suffering from ‘information overload’, with Bing offered as the cure.”

That’s all well and good but, as we reported Tuesday, Bing’s UK search share of just 3.6 percent is miniscule compared with Google’s 88 percent. Even combined with Yahoo’s 3.9 percent, which Bing is about the overtake, the pair still only get 7.5 percent of UK searches…

Microsoft’s announcement says there has been a “lack of innovation in search engines for over a decade”.

At the same time, Microsoft’s UK chief marketing officer Mike Fischer is leaving the company after a year in the job, Marketing reports. Microsoft would not comment to paidContent:UK.

It’s not the first time a search engine has tried advertising to dent Google (NSDQ: GOOG). In 2007, Ask.com used a guerrilla-style marketing effort to urge London commuters to “stop the online information monopoly” - a campaign aimed at hooking Google users that cast Google as an oppressive regime and the audience as a rebel fighter faction.

“In hindsight, it may have been the wrong approach,” Ask.com’s European MD Cesar Mascaraque told me in 2009. “Maybe trying to compete head-on with Google was not the best investment.” After reintroducing Jeeves in Britain, however, Ask.com has also been catching up Yahoo.