Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) search is now roughly 3-times that of Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO). To make matters worse, its "searchers" appear to be much more active in search. While Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is far behind in market share, it actually has about 20% more searches from its users.
Provider Searches Share of Searches per
(000) Searches Searcher
Google Search 4,223,703 56.9% 39.6
Yahoo! Search 1,407,062 19.0% 25.1
MSN/Live Search 894,129 12.1% 30.1
Google Search had roughly 4.2 billion search queries, which was almost 57% of all search queries conducted during the given time period. Be advised that some changes were made to search criteria out of Nielsen Online effective in October, 2007.
When you see this you might wonder if MSN/Live might be better off spending these mega-billions of dollars offered for Yahoo! on itself for marketing and other promotional developments. Obviously search is not the only goal in this hoped-for acquisition, but it is a large portion of it. If Microsoft is successful in its bid, this would instantly yield a 30% market share if this stayed static and if this had no dilutive effects from combining the two operations.
Jon C. Ogg
February 25, 2008