Comments on: Michael Arrington doesn’t get search

By: Michael Martinez

Michael Martinez — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:38:30 +0000

Compete, comScore, Hitwise, and Nielsen all still use bogus statistics to measure search market share. Right now, Google probably controls about 40% of real search market share. If Yahoo! and Microsoft merge you can expect to see Google capture about 10% additional real market share.

If they acquire more than 80% of real market share, they’ll be an effective search monopoly.

What people don’t see is that Google has — through its Google Appliance program — moved into Enterprise Search in a big way. There was a time when Enterprise Search was where the real money was. It’s still a big market. If end up in a world where 90% of all Web and Enterprise searches are performed on Google technologies, you can expect to see some significant government scrutiny (far more than we have now).

It would not be unreasonable for people to ask for a Google breakup (the way AT & T was broken up years ago).

By: wibbler

wibbler — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:09:44 +0000

“The search industry is probably about to drop into a long dark age dominated” – by google.
MM – I feel that a drop into the dark ages occurred years ago.
“People who have been able to count on traffic from Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Ask when Google closes them out”
When you say “closes them out” – what do you mean? Am I interpreting your comment there correctly by assuming you mean literally that by “closes them out” you mean a combination of things like deranking affiliate sites, putting good content into the supplemental index hardly ever to be seen?
Is there a way you could possibly expand on “closes them out” to paint a picture of how you feel google “hurts” websites – and perhaps the kind of websites which are indeed being “closed out”.?

Thanks – yes – I am for one pretty worried that left with only google as an option I may have to close up shop.
Wibbler.