Google's ever-growing market share
Siva asks: "Why and how did Google increase its share of the search market 7 percent in less than two years? For the past five years or so it seems that MSN, Google, and Yahoo all provide similar search quality and many of the same ancillary services. Why would a person in 2009 stop using Yahoo and start using Google?"
A few speculations:
1. Don't assume that the continuing growth in market share is just, or even mainly, from people switching from other engines to Google's. Use of the Internet (and of search) continues to expand. If a very large percentage of new users choose to use Google, as is likely given that the company is now synonymous with search, then Google's share would keep increasing even if no existing users switched.
2. Google's service is better. That doesn't necessarily mean it provides better results. It could mean that it provides results faster than competitors, that it displays better (ie, more relevant) advertisements, that it offers an easier way to extend searches to blogs, books, images, academic articles, etc. We can assume that users have various criteria for judging the quality of a search engine, and Google may have real or perceived advantages on a number of those criteria.
3. There's a halo effect from the growth in the use of other Google services, from gmail, to Maps, to Calendar, to Reader and so on. As long as Google's share of "ancillary services" grows faster than the shares of its search competitors, Google's search share would also tend to grow disproportionately.
4. YouTube.
5. People increasingly see Google as cooler than its major competitors, Yahoo and Microsoft, neither of which have exactly been media darlings recently. There might be a certain status equated with using Google.
6. The market share of the Mac OS has been growing at the expense of Windows, and Google is the default search engine for Apple.
7. The market share of the Microsoft search engine, Explorer, has been falling, mainly due to inroads by Firefox, and when people switch from Explorer to Firefox it's likely they'll switch to Google as their default engine.
8. There's been a general shift away from using search engine home pages and toward using search boxes in toolbars, and that, too, may be funneling people toward Google.
I don't know how important (or even true) any of these are, but in combination it strikes me that they could help explain Google's ever greater dominance of the search market.
I thought Google was first in specializing searches to areas like images. It also has a catchy name, much more appealing than the idiotic Yahoo. Alta Vista was my choice in the 90s, but Google was also first, I think, to link up click ads. Ask Jeeves had me for a little while, as did Dogpile, but Google delivered what I and more people wanted, I'd say.
January 15, 2009 6:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
These speculations seem pretty accurate to me.
I think the next big change is going to come as the major players get their clouds fully up and running. This, as far as I can tell, does not augur well for Yahoo because no one mentions Yahoo as a cloud player - and I suspect at this point it doesn't have the capital to be a player.
(You might want to edit item 6 since the thoughts are correct but the names are wrong.)
January 15, 2009 6:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
What I took to be speculation 6 now appears to be speculation 7.
January 15, 2009 8:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
It could be Mozilla Firefox. Over the past number of years Firefox's market share has grown to 20%. As Google is the default search engine for Firefox (and in fact it's primary benefactor) it may have brilliantly played MS at its own game.
Strike another one for free and open source software.
tallli
January 15, 2009 8:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think FirFox having Google as their default start up page really affects it users preferences over Microsoft. If you are using Firefox over Internet Explorer, you've already expressed a non-Microsoft preference.
Anyone who uses a default task bar search form tied to the same search engine is in my opinion a data-diver failure. One should never depend entirely upon one search engine. It will end up[ blinding you to potentialities.
January 16, 2009 2:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think Google has played the public relations game perfectly. Google hasn't really changed the world in terms of use qua use of the computer but it comes across as if it has. When Google first started it was miles ahead of the other search engines but that is no longer the case. Say Google disappeared from the Earth not much would be different. A whole lot of hype about being a revolutionary company explains a whole lot of Google's success now.
January 16, 2009 12:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think (as everyone else also observes) the major growth is a result of bundling (Firefox, Safari, toolbars, etc) and also through providing a useful search widget that many people use to provide local/global searches integrated with their web sites (HuffPo for example - every time someone searches, it's technically a Google search). The real question is not so much how Google got here - but where they go from here.
To go on a bit like a broken record, Google is no longer primarily focused on expanding their profits based on growing their search business. They have largely reached their apex. Michael Goodman at "The Sreet" seems closer to honing in on the real situation...
There is a certain mindset that the way things were yesterday (or are today) will be how they will continue. But there is only so much searching to be done.
And THAT is the big question which, IMO, Google has already answered for themselves. Goodman alludes to it in his conclusion, but he doesn't seem to understand the various streams of revenue he's talking about.
I rambled about one specific aspect the other day: Android alone is going to bring them serious revenue. There's the obvious money to be made by Google Checkout for every application sold, but that's icing. Many Google programs (Maps, Amazon, etc) aren't open source. These come bundled (along with Google search BTW) with the core OS package implemented by the carrier - for a fee. By eliminating the underlying cost for the platform, Google has created a financial space where carriers can purchase a full suite of applications and still enjoy a significantly lower cost per unit than other OS platforms.
All of these devices will obviously increase Google's search volume to a degree but mobile devices are a different creature than desktops and search isn't really apples to apples. Youtube stands to experience a far greater explosion of user base than Google's "core" search product(and Youtube isn't tied to their Android OS).
They are also diversifying into the SaaS application space - trying to challenge MS on the desktop (and bring pertinent data from "the cloud" to mobile devices seamlessly ... for a monthly/yearly fee).
Google still plans to grow, but there is only so much further they can go with search. A big question in my mind is if their next moves will foster competition/innovation or repress it.
January 16, 2009 1:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
As an example of hype take Google's Lunar X Prize for example. I think that is great public relations (Google is opening up the next frontier!) but I doubt Google is ever going to have to pay out the prize money. Lunar exploration is too expenive and with too little economic benefit to be undertaken by corporations. Sure groups are entering but for publicity.
January 16, 2009 11:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Google is a good company with a good philosophy and a good product. They gain market share because they pay attention to what eyeballs want to see.
No reason they can't crash every bit as hard as Yahoo if they miss a trick. But they're IBM right now, like Microsoft and IBM before them.
January 16, 2009 11:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
As a Live Search user I am happy Google is around. Microsoft builds much better products when faced with competition.
January 16, 2009 12:56 PM | Reply | Permalink