Those people who had been under the impression and that Yahoo! and Bing were not especially relevant as far as the search industry is concerned were forced to reevaluate their position recently with news that Google’s share of the market was the lowest in 5 years. While Bing is still bigger that Yahoo! (with 12.5% of the search market) Yahoo! has gained the most benefit from Google’s contraction, announcing its highest market share in the same number of years.
A number of factors have driven Google’s recent poor search results. One factor was Mozilla’s decision to add Yahoo! as its default search engine for its Firefox browser (Firefox 34) – a browser that had 18% of the browser market in 2014. Despite the results it is important to remember Google maintains dominance in the market with around 75% of searches at the end of last year.
It is also important to remember that while Google makes genuine profit, both Yahoo! and Microsoft subsidize their search activity. Nonetheless, these results will concern Google, and act as a spur to Yahoo! and Bing – if adding Yahoo! to Firefox has such an impact on Google’s search share, surely they will be looking for new and innovative ways of getting their search engines in front of more Google customers.
What do you think? Are Google’s days numbered? Let us know your thoughts. Add your comments below.
