MSN grows but Google holds firm

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NEWS

For the moment, add Google's search dominance to the short list — death and taxes — of things that are inevitable.

For July, Google was the market share leader in the US search arena, accounting for 36.5 percent of all searches submitted, according to data released Friday by ComScore Media Metrix. The company has long topped various measurements of search popularity.

Yahoo was a strong second for the month; its share of the market was 30.5 percent, and the Web stalwart continued to have the leading search toolbar — it served as the starting point for 51 percent of all toolbar searches in July. Eleven percent of all US domestic searches took place via toolbars, up from 8 percent in July 2004, ComScore reported.

Third place for overall searches submitted went to Microsoft and its MSN unit, at 15.5 percent, ComScore said. The software powerhouse saw the biggest gain among the top search engines, up 30 percent from the same month last year.

Rounding out the top five were Time Warner, America Online, at 9.9 percent, and Ask Jeeves, at 6.1 percent, according to the report. The total volume of online searches in July was up 22 percent year over year to 4.8 billion.

Talkback

How much of that growth is due to default settings in MSIE? Anti-trust law are going to be against MS again in this case. Nothing to see here. Just another example of leveraging the desktop monopoly to break into another market where it has been unable to compete on technical merits.

via Facebook 22 August, 2005 11:37
Reply

Er, no. By your logic that would mean Microsoft somehow got 30% more people to use IE with default settings. Which hasn't happened. Weren't you the guy who absurdly said MS doesn't recognise the WebDAV standard? You might be more comfortable on Slashdot...

via Facebook 22 August, 2005 17:57
Reply

Olav, stop!
You make a product, as long as it is not illegal or unlawful, default settings are yours.
As long as users can CHANGE the default settings, what is anti-competitive about that?
Why not ask YHOO & GOOG to make MSN the default search engine for their toolbars? And while you are at it, ask Opera & Firefox to make MSN search their default as well?

via Facebook 22 August, 2005 18:10
Reply

John O.! It is illegal to use one monopoly to gain a monopoly in a new market. MS has been found guilty, though not punished, in both the EU and the US of abusing its desktop monopoly. In this case the case of Netscape is most relevant.

MS was handed a monopoly on desktop operating systems by IBM. The monopoly status of MS-DOS was used to launch Windows into the same position. Then MS used (illegally leveraged) it's desktop monopoly to enter the browser market, then dominated by Netscape, and establish a monopoly there. That's all fact. Don't argue with me. Go argue with the federal courts and the US Department of Justice.

Now MS is wanting to break into the search engine market for some time. Google dominates. However, by setting the default settings for MSIE to point to their own service which is gunning for Google, that's an example of abusing an existing monopoly.

Sorry, but that's how it is.

via Facebook 23 August, 2005 09:28
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