Google snatches search share from rivals

Google's search share encroached on rivals, rising 0.4 percentage points to 63.5 percent from October to November.

(Credit: ComScore)

Correction at 5:50 a.m. Monday: This story had an incorrect total for U.S. searches in November. The total was 12.3 billion.

Google grabbed a chunk of market share from rival search engines in the United States in November, new figures from ComScore show.

Google's share increased 0.4 percentage points to 63.5 percent from October to November, while Yahoo dropped 0.1 percentage points to 20.4 percent and Microsoft dropped 0.2 percentage points to 8.3 percent.

Further down the pecking order, Ask.com dropped 0.2 percentage points to 4.0 percent and AOL rose 0.1 percent to 3.8 percent, ComScore said.

The total searches performed dropped 3 percent to 12.3 billion, though, so even Google lost out in absolute terms even as it gained share. Each search holds the potential to show search ads, so the query total is financially significant.

[BlitzBoy1120]

Come on, it's Google. This isn't much a of a surprise to me since Google is getting better everyday.

[Sam Papelbon]

OR... google users were more inquisitive and felt like making more searches...

OR... google returned too many bad results so people had to make additional searches...

OR...

[RompStar_420]

OR you have Google, you you have to talk shilznick.

[limefan913]

Same headline, different month.

[idfubar]

Would a market share of 90%+ be a necessary and sufficient condition for being considered a monopoly?

[JCPayne]

Nope, go look up the term monopoly.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Monopoly?jss=0

"exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices. Compare duopoly, oligopoly."

The graph shows there are other players. Cable companies are municipal monopolies. Microsoft is a monopoly because they wouldn't allow the PC manufacturers to sell other O/Ses in their product line. The other carriers just need to better their offerings and they'll be competitive with Google. Google wasn't always where it was don't forget before them there was for example Altavista.com (Which mind you is now owned by Yahoo.)

[lordmorgul]

Google's share increased 0.4%.... are you kidding me? A story about a shift so small it is deep into the margin of error? Bore me.