There are occasional conversations among regulators in the US and EU about whether Google (GOOG) has too much of the search engine advertising market. In America, it controls about 70% of the industry. That is not near where Microsoft’s (MSFT) share of the browser industry was when Redmond ran into antitrust problems, but it is close.
The CEO of cellular carrier giant Vodafone (NYSE:VOD) today asked regulators to consider Google’s increased control of the search advertising market on mobile phones. Google’s piece may be as large as it is on PCs. The launch of its new Android wireless operating system will probably aid the No.1 search company’s expansion.
According to BusinessWeek, research firm Gartner has forecast that mobile advertising revenue will rise from$530 million in 2008 to $7.5 billion two years from now. Projections for new technology and marketing products are notoriously optimistic, but Google could add several billion to its sales by the end of the decade if its majority share of the mobile search market holds.
There may be no reason for alarm. Google’s dominance in PC search does not seem to have hurt any other companies except smaller rivals Yahoo! (YHOO) and MSN. There is no strong case to be made that social media sites especially MySpace and Facebook have been harmed. On the contrary, Google provides sites like these with revenue. Google’s large market share has not hurt news and entertainment websites. As a matter of fact, it sends them a great deal of their traffic.
Vodafone may care about Google’s handset market share, but there seems to be little reason anyone else should.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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