Google and Yahoo Lead the Search World

Some recent industry blog posts show that Google is continuing to increase its share of the search market. It has gone from the 800 lb gorilla to the 900 lb gorilla. Yahoo on the other hand leads in mobile search

Google's Market Share Tops 65 Percent

Posted by Matt Asay January 2, 2008 11:31 AM PST

Google may not have monopoly power, but it certainly has monopoly mind share. As The New York Times reports, Google's search market share has jumped from 58 percent in March 2006 to 65.1 percent today. Yahoo? Less than one-third of Google's share. Microsoft? Less than one-ninth.

Monopoly? Not in the ordinary sense of the word. Google may well be aiming for a data monopoly to keep us close forever and ever, but for now it just has a brand monopoly that keeps users on its site, feeding it ever-increasing mountains of data.

We are feeding the beast, in other words. Whether it turns out to be a benevolent or malignant beast, however, is out of our hands. An interesting quagmire...

Yahoo Leads in Mobile Search

Posted by Enid Burns, The ClickZ Network, Jan 8, 2008

Yahoo has greater mobile reach than its competitors, according to M:Metrics. In October, 17.4 million users accessed mobile sites on Yahoo, compared to 12.6 million for Google; 9.3 million for AOL; and 8.7 million for MSN's mobile properties. All other brands combined served 20.4 million users.

Yahoo has boosted its investment in mobile services and ad representation with enhancements to its OneSearch http://mobile.yahoo.com/onesearch/tryit and Yahoo Go http://mobile.yahoo.com/go mobile platforms.

The changes revolve around a new open platform strategy under which publishers and advertisers are invited to create applications for the mobile search and services platforms. Yahoo said EBay, MTV, and MySpace are the first partners to develop material for the platform; larger publishers may opt to sell their own ads, though any publisher can let Yahoo handle its inventory.

"Yahoo is very much in the business of creating a large mobile ad network," said Michael Bayle, senior director of mobile advertising at Yahoo. Bayle added standardization of mobile widget ads may be the next hurdle for Yahoo, and the mobile industry at large.

Apart from publishers creating and monetizing widgets under the mobile developer platform, Bayle said Yahoo has seen interest from advertisers in creating widgets. Mainstream brands across the automotive, travel, and financial sectors have been the most active, Bayle said, though he declined to name specific advertisers currently developing content.

Yahoo's mobile announcements, announced yesterday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, were only one component of an overarching strategy outlined by Yahoo co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang. The company's new goal is to deliver "the most personally relevant and indispensable Internet experience to consumers worldwide," regardless of platform, the company said in a statement.

Yahoo aims to capture more users by allowing them to customize their mobile experiences. People can create a start page containing e-mail, Yahoo buddy status, news feeds, widgets, and RSS feeds. Feeds may top out at around three, to make the home page both useful and navigable. "Yahoo spent some time harmonizing the content to appear as best as possible on a mobile device," Bayle said.

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