Sherry Gil

Google Should Hit 90% Search Market Share

If Microsoft acquired Yahoo I strongly doubt that Google would continue to increase its share of the search market, on the contrary it would decline.

One of the reasons why Google currently dominates the search market is that the Google search engine, or search box, is carried by a multitude of websites, many in conjunction with the Google adsense.

Many times when I'm searching for information at a website, and I did not find exactly what I'm looking for, I tend to search again using the search box on the web page. And most of the search boxes I'm seeing is a Google search box. Just how many Yahoo, or MSN, search boxes have we seen on the multitude of websites out there?

Many will argue that Google's search algorithm is superior, than say Yahoo, which accounts for Google's popularity. I don't know if that were true, or not, but this argument reminds me of the old Betamax vs. VHS war.

Sony's Betamax was perceived to be superior, and had smaller footprint, than the VHS but the VHS format became more popular because it was widely adopted by tape player manufacturers when Sony refused to licensee its technology to others. Consumers were seeing VHS machines everywhere but very few Betamax players. So the VHS machines outsold the Betamax by a very wide margin.

Having said that, part of Google's popularity is that we are mostly seeing Google search boxes out there. But if we see less of the Google search boxes in websites, the more likely we would use the default search engine in our browsers - it's simply a matter of convenience.

And here lies the big problem: Microsoft dominates the PC operating system, including the browser market with its Internet Explorer. Microsoft can rename the combined MSN-Yahoo search engine as the new IE Search and make it the default search engine in IE, claiming that IE Search is just but a natural extension of the IE browser functionality. (Didn't Microsoft claimed before that the IE was a natural extension of the windows operating system?)

And it could be worse for Google. With Microsoft dominating the search market, with the combination of MSN and Yahoo, what would prevent Microsoft from "tweaking" its algorithm in a subtle way so that websites carrying the Google Adsense and Google search box would appear further down in search result listings? It would hit Google where it hurts most - its pocketbook.

Google hitting 90% of the search market? I don't so.