It’s beginning to look like the Search Wars are over, at least for now: Google has won.
Despite everything Microsoft and Yahoo! have been able to throw at it, Google’s share of the search business has just kept going up, to the point where it finally seems time to declare this contest done (though with two caveats – see below.) Whatever the next front in the battle for online dominance, it looks like it won’t be in search.
The latest figures from ComScore today make the point. Already dominant in Europe, Google’s share of US searches reached 58.5 per cent in October. That is up from only around 35 per cent in November 2004 – the month when Microsoft formally took the gloves off with the launch of its own search engine. In almost every month since, Google has bitten off a little more of the business. (Nielsen NetRatings figures show a slightly less dramatic rise, but the story is essentially the same.) Who would have predicted that three years ago?
A growing awareness that Google’s lead now looks impregnable has underpinned its latest stock price rise, and led one analyst this week to suggest that $900 a share is now in sight.
So what could go wrong? One caveat is that, despite Google’s massive brand and technological advantages, there is still nothing to stop its users defecting en masse for a better experience elsewhere. It has become fashionable to compare the maturing Google to Microsoft, but the lack of customer lock-in is formidable. The search wars are over for now, but this is a fight that can easily resume – after all, who would have expected a return to the Browser Wars?
The other caveat is China. Fair or not, Google has not been able to make much of a dent against Baidu in what is set to become the world’s biggest internet search market.
Still, it will be years before China boasts an online advertising business to match the scale of its internet audience. For the next few years at least, the lion’s share of the booming profits from internet search now look destined to flow into Google’s coffers.
