Google Maintains It Huge Lead In Search, Again

Month after month, Comscore puts out U.S. search engine market share data. Month after month, the leader by an extraordinary margin is Google (NASDAQ: GOOG). August was no exception with Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) fighting for a distant second spot and IAC/Interactive’s (NASDAQ: IACI) Ask.com and AOL (NYSE: AOL) much further behind.

According to Comscore:

Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in August with 66.4 percent market share, followed by Microsoft Sites with 15.9 percent and Yahoo! Sites with 12.8 percent. Ask Network accounted for 3.2 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.7 percent.

There has been a revival of interest in Google’s good prospects recently, despite the lack of success the company has had in making money from anything other than search advertising. Its Android mobile OS is the most widely used in the world, but investors are puzzled about how it creates revenue. Android may also be the next target of the legions of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) attorneys who successfully filed a patent suit against Samsung.

Google’s shares recently rose above $700–a multi-year high. The stock is up 30% over the last year.

Douglas A. McIntyre