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Microsoft saw its share of the market slip to 9 percent, down from 10.1 percent a month earlier. Google, meanwhile, increased its lead, accounting for 55.2 percent of Web searches, up from 53.7 percent in March. Yahoo grew its share to 21.9 percent, up narrowly from the 21.8 percent share it held in March.
The April results return to a familiar pattern of Google gaining ground at the expense of its chief rivals, although Microsoft had been doing a bit better in recent months. In its January earnings conference call, Microsoft executives indicated that they were not pleased with the company's search results.
AOL remained in fourth place for April, but saw its share slip to 5.4 percent from 5.8 percent in March, while Ask.com held steady in fifth place with 1.8 percent of search queries.
In an interview at Microsoft's Strategic Account Summit two weeks ago, a top executive expressed hope that Microsoft was starting to make inroads in search, but said that it might not post gains every month.
"I'm not even going to say it's a trend yet," Chief Advertising Strategist Yusuf Mehdi said, referring to the fact that Microsoft had posted share gains for each of the past three months. "I'm not going to predict that that's the bottom and now it's all up, but that's momentum."
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Me, I prefer not to use Google for the simple reason that we need competition. Google is dominating search like MS is dominating the OS. Google's (virtual) monopoly, if it continues, will not be good for anyone except Google shareholders.
But after trying it, they go back to a search engine that works well, and MS's numbers go back down.
How many of you have found that MS search was the default when IE7 arrived, or that when the kids downloaded MSN Messenger there was suddeenly a search toolbar. Or that a bad URL invoked an MSN search due to some hidden Registry key ?
They should own up to the fact that nobody actively wants these services and stop infecting our computers with them.
them miserably at search relevancy. I was trying to search for a
new story on CNN a few months back, and naturally their search is
powered by Yahoo and not one of the results were even close to
what I was looking for. I went and done a Google search and the
ENTIRE first page linked to news sites reporting the story, including
CNN.
Microsoft are learning a hard lesson. i.e., you can stretch your brand too thin.
When Levis branched out and starting making all kinds of other clothes, they increased revenue in teh short term, but then noticed that their jean sales were going steadily down because they watered down their brand and ca. So they cut down their range so as to not cause confusion as to what Levis were.
Microsoft in its greed tries to take on everybody. As a result they have Xbox, Zune, OS, Software, Live, Advertising, etc.
Simply put, they have watered down the brand to the degree that no one knows what Microsoft means anymore.
People google because Google is Search.
What do people do when they Microsoft?
I guess if there is an answer it is to find a way to stop viruses. Who knows anymore? But for old timers, they will always be Windows and Office.
Cheers
Serg
The same thing happened when Google first came on the scene.
The same thing happened when Google first came on the scene.
what. While thats a great attitude for a toddler, sooner of later a
grown-up learns what they are good at and stays on that. Since
Vista and XP present numerous security challenges that need
fixing, it would be best to stick 50,000 programmers on the
operating system fixes first.
There is No Midas Touch as Microsoft, and their dim-witted, we
got money, lets throw everything at the wall and see what sticks
mentality about markets they get into smells like desperation.
Google IS Search, nuff said.
to call them.
It's appalling, really, hearing MS supporters telling everyone who
doesn't agree with them "uninformed" (or worse), but that's the
mind set these people live with.
People fear Microsoft and are not willing to hand them another
marketplace.
Deal with it.
Interested in your observations.
thanks
Tom
And for what I'm searching for the hits are really odd sometimes. I definitely noticed this with Alta Vista way back when it was cool as well.
The trick here is that I can't say that other search engines are faring any better because I generally use Google simply because it's built into Firefox and I'm lazy.
Consider IBM's AS-400. It was a midrange computer found only deep within the data-centers of banks and hotels. Nobody outside of the data-center should have known what it was, but everybody did. It was being mentioned in best-selling novels, and showing up in movies. Almost everybody knew --at least-- that an AS-400 was some kind of corporate-level computer.
So what did the geniuses at IBM's marketing department do? Oh Crap! People all know what an AS-400 is, let's change the name to iSeries quick! Yeeeaaah, THAT's the TICKET.
And later, when people started figuring out that iSeries was really just an AS-400, the marketing department again sprang into action: "Oh, no, they're still thinking of it as an AS-400, let's change the name again quick!"
Now Microsoft?
So, up until recently I thought this was just some strange aberration at IBM's marketing department. But now I see that Microsoft's marketing department is doing the same thing: "What? People are starting to think of the letters 'MSN' when they want to do a search?!? We need to fix that quick! Let's start calling it 'Live' now! Get Gates out on the morning shows referring to our search engine as 'Live', we'll fix those pesky potential customers".
is. I know a lot of people who have google as their home page and
the rest of of us use Firefox/Safari,etc. that has Google search built
in.
Screw Microsoft!
- I'm really surpised: how come kentonr starts his very deep, technical analysis and highly objective evaluation of different search engines with absolutely inappropriate word "Maybe"??? :)
- Underemployment in unemployment in the US service sector will be the biggest election issue for 2008 because it is already causing BIG financial problems for middle class Americans.
- Credit problems, foreclosures up in mid-upper middle class America and main reason cited was job loss (CT)
That being said, I personally do not think that Google has a monopoly by the classic definition. However, I do believe that Google's name recognition is giving it additional market share over other, more capable, search engines, and if it continues, they will rapidly reach a monopoly status. As it is now, most people who search on Yahoo or Live do not go to those sites to do a search, they are already there and the search is ancillary to their visit. If we consider only the users who actually visit a specific site to perform a search, I think that Google's market share would be significantly higher than 55%, and AOL would be close to 0%.
- Google, Ebay, YouTube
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by Vegaman_Dan
May 23, 2007 12:29 PM PDT
- These sites have become verbs in today's language. Want to find something online? You Google it, you don't MSN Search it. Google is quick, simple, and not distracting. I'm there to look for something online, not to have to look through a heavily spammy site trying to find the data I requested.
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Reply to this comment
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(35 Comments)Google. It works. It doesn't need anything more than it is. The toolbar in IE is not invasive and doesn't cause problems with the system.
It just works.