11 ms·

Google Loses Most US Search Share Since 2009 While Yahoo Gains

143 points by sanxiyn 12y ago

prlambert 12y ago
This isn't really much of a surprise, it was virtually guaranteed by the Firefox deal. As the article says, "I doubt Google needs to worry. For one, that’s probably the high water mark". Low-water mark (in terms of market share for Google) would probably be a better phrase, but the point is that unless Firefox grows a lot (which seems unlikely) the damage to Google is done.
- SG- 12y ago
  More damage could be done if Yahoo worked a deal with Apple to change the default search engine. At the end of the day tho it's all about money and Google has more of it.
  - mattmanser 12y ago
    How is it about money?
    - mburns 12y ago
      Google pays Apple to be the default search provider.
      - 72deluxe 12y ago
        Bing is the default Spotlight and Safari search in Yosemite. I can find no way of changing it back to Google for Spotlight, which is incredibly irritating as I find the Bing results useless.
        denzil_correa 12y ago
        The web search feature in Spotlight is equivalent to the search engine of your default browser.
        72deluxe 12y ago
        I don't think it is - the search engine option in Safari does not affect Spotlight. Spotlight is hardcoded.
        petecooper 12y ago
        Not entirely what you're looking for, granted, but might help: http://flashlight.nateparrott.com http://flashlight.nateparrott.com
- bad_user 12y ago
  The Mozilla-Yahoo deal could turn out to be mutually beneficial in that regard. Yahoo for example has started to recommend Firefox to its users [1]. And Yahoo's market share should not be underestimated. On the list of most popular destinations, according to traffic rankings yahoo.com is number 4, being beaten only by google.com, facebook.com and youtube.com. And somehow Marissa Mayer has been turning the tide and I've seen positive things happening. For example I'm happy that they started developing Flickr again. Perceptions can change overnight and Google can certainly lose some more market share. I just hope that Yahoo! / Bing will improve their search for non-US users. Sadly for me Google provides the best search results and it's not even a competition. And it makes me sad, because while search engines are easily configurable in Firefox, I would have liked to support Mozilla indirectly with my searches and those of my acquaintances to which I'm recommending Firefox (pennies I know, but they add up). [1] http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/12/yahoo-starts-prompting-chrome-users-to-upgrade-to-firefox/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/12/yahoo-starts-prompting-chro...
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  >unless Firefox grows a lot (which seems unlikely) the damage to Google is done. Another way mozilla are their worst enemy. Making firefox into a chrome clone just drives away its users, while the masses they are trying to attract are staying on chrome because all they deliver is a compromised experience for the people who want firefox.
krisgenre 12y ago
Losing monopoly might actually be good for them.
- IBM 12y ago
  Not in the US. That's been settled already and Google spends too much money on lobbying for anyone to take a go at it (they also have a close relationship with the Obama administration).
  - adventured 12y ago
    How would Google prevent a competing search engine from taking their market share via lobbyist spending or any connections they have to the Obama Administration?
    - CmonDev 12y ago
      By suppressing the "shouldn't we stop Google's monopoly" suggestions in senate or whatever other ways USA uses for governing itself.
      - raverbashing 12y ago
        Yeah, maybe we can have a government subsidised search engine, powered by the same people that did healthcare.gov right? I don't think there's any monopoly to be broken in search, it's just that the competitors aren't up to that level. (In other areas I might agree)
  - nostrademons 12y ago
    It's not the legalities that's the real problem, it's the complacency that results from being the only game in town, and the ensuing attraction of employees who want a cushy gig with no real competition and exodus of employees who want to be challenged and pushed forwards.
  - matthewmacleod 12y ago
    I don't think that's the point though – more that a decline in market share for Google may result in improvements. Nothing government or regulatory about it.
BorisMelnik 12y ago
Let's not forget this little metric: mobile. These stats were taken from Statcounter which is not a comprehensive representation of the marketshare. http://i.imgur.com/aOXsraC.png http://i.imgur.com/aOXsraC.png According to the same data, Google owns 87% of the mobile market, and I venture to guess that number is actually higher and will continue to climb in 2015 as mobile will continue to dominate the consumer market.
- fulafel 12y ago
  It's odd that Firefox isn't more popular on mobile, the competition lacks extension support so it should have a bigger edge.
  - cheapsteak 12y ago
    Are extensions really useful for mobile browsers? Most things I use extensions for have their own apps (chromecast, hangouts, email)
    - fpgeek 12y ago
      I'm a big fan of Self-Destructing Cookies (on the desktop and on mobile).
    - coldpie 12y ago
      Good lord, yes. Have you ever browsed the web on mobile without AdBlock? It's nearly useless. Setting aside the bandwidth you're wasting, nearly every page redirects you to the app store or pops up a dozen shitty ads before you can see the content. I'm still baffled that ad networks allow advertisers to inject arbitrary javascript into their banner ads. Why on earth are they allowed to deliver anything other than an image? Anyways, I'll never browse the web without AdBlock again and I'm astounded that so many people are able to do so.
    - fulafel 12y ago
      With the current privacy hostile browser defaults, it's pretty much a must if you care about that department at all. (Of course it may be that nobody privacy conscious uses Android/iOS at all...)
aramadia 12y ago
f we assume a modest 1:4 US to world ratio and a difference of 4.1% as explained by the firefox switch, then the entire US firefox userbase is about 1% of the world. Google won't be sweating.
- bzbarsky 12y ago
  Firefox only switched to Yahoo in the US so far. And Yandex in Russia, and Baidu in China. It's using Google everywhere else, for now.
willvarfar 12y ago
What a clickbait title :) > Google’s slice of the U.S. search market fell to 75.2 percent in December from 79.3 percent a year ago, while Yahoo jumped to 10.4 percent from 7.4 percent I was expecting a landslide :)
- sanxiyn 12y ago
  Well, for Yahoo, 10.4% from 7.4% is 40% increase.
Animats 12y ago
Yes, choice of search engine is mostly by default. Most Bing searches come from Microsoft products where Bing is the default. One would think that Mozilla users would turn off Yahoo search immediately, but apparently some do not. Yahoo doesn't really have a search engine, and hasn't for five years. They resell Bing and add some in-house content. The only reason to search with Yahoo is if you want their in-house content. Bing is currently more literal-minded than Google. Google is using too much popularity-based machine learning to "correct" what you're searching for. It's become difficult on Google to search for a non-popular thing that happens to be close to a popular search target. Google does not treat quote marks as a mandatory exact match any more, just a hint. Running a search engine is so profitable that even the little guys with < 1% market share make money - Ask, InfoSeek, DuckDuckGo, and Blekko are all profitable. (Cuil blew it - no revenue model.) The most valuable ads on the Internet are the ones on search results, because they appear when someone is actively seeking something. Almost all other ads are interruptions. The only thing that keeps the phone vendors and carriers from entering the search engine business is huge payments from Apple, Google, and Bing. Microsoft's current approach to Bing is unusual. Bing used to have its own CEO; the last one was Satya Nadella, who is now CEO of Microsoft. Now, various parts of Bing are under five different Microsoft VPs who also have other responsibilities. Some people speculated that this was in preparation for closing down or selling off Bing, but that doesn't seem to be happening. Anyone know more about that?
- AndrewKemendo 12y ago
  Google is using too much popularity-based machine learning to "correct" what you're searching for. This is exactly right and something I have been arguing for a while. Google's algos are good for finding what is popular, not necessarily what is right (though these things often overlap).
- Svip 12y ago
  > The only reason to search with Yahoo is if you want their in-house content. Or wish to support Mozilla through their deal with Yahoo!.
  - blueskin_ 12y ago
nchelluri 12y ago
I am a Firefox user, and the switch encouraged me to explore non-Google search engine alternatives. For my personal browsing I tried Yahoo for a few days but have since switched to using DuckDuckGo. It's definitely not bad. But for work, and for when I'm not satisfied with the results, I still use Google. In my opinion, it is a superior search engine.
- adventured 12y ago
  Isn't DuckDuckGo primarily powered by Bing, which also powers Yahoo? Or has this changed?
  - kome 12y ago
    DDG uses yandex a lot, not bing.
    - adventured 12y ago
      No, they still use Bing (assuming their site is accurate) https://duck.co/help/results/sources https://duck.co/help/results/sources "DuckDuckGo gets its results from over one hundred sources, including DuckDuckBot (our own crawler), crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, which are stored in our own index), Yahoo! (through BOSS), Yandex, Yelp, and Bing."
unicornporn 12y ago
And Yahoo is Powered by Bing, right?
- mtmail 12y ago
  Yahoo used to be powered by Google around 2004 and was still loosing market share to Google. Blind tests with just the logo replaced (same web results) had users still prefer Google. It was crazy. Disclaimer: I worked on Yahoo search.
alexhektor 12y ago
Google scaled buys (e.g. toolbars/default searches) back massively while Yahoo bought up that traffic.
blueskin_ 12y ago
The main problem with google is that it's too 'smart' for its own good (smart tool makes stupid users). If I search for something, I don't want it to by default include a massive list of other 'helpful' things up to and including antonyms or different word order that changes the meaning (e.g. how "foo guide for bar users" == "bar guide for foo users" according to google). Google has been getting dumber ever since it stopped supporting + and "". Similarly, although most search engines (except DuckDuckGo) filter bubble people, it is by far the most pervasive and irritating with google. So far, every single person I have explained filter bubbles to has been weirded out by the idea and thanked me for telling them about it. Of course, the other reason Google loses ground is privacy - Yahoo is definitely not good on privacy, but at least they fought as hard as they could before their hand was forced where google capitulated immediately. I can't wait until in a year or two DuckDuckGo is as good as google (not as hard as it used to be)...
- proexploit 12y ago
  > Yahoo is definitely not good on privacy, but at least they fought as hard as they could before their hand was forced where google capitulated immediately. Can you share a source for that?
  - blueskin_ 12y ago
    https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/yahoo-fight-for-users-earns-company-special-recognition https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/yahoo-fight-for-users-...
    - proexploit 12y ago
      > Of course, it's possible more companies have challenged this secret surveillance, but we just don't know about it yet. And no other mention of Google in the article. Great that Yahoo fought them but it doesn't support your assertion that Google immediately gave in or cares less for privacy than Yahoo. Even better, the same source you provided (EFF's Who Has Your Back report: https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013 https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013) gives this as Yahoo's only positive mark while Google is 5/6.
petecooper 12y ago
I'm a mobile computer technician in rural north Cornwall, UK. My clients are domestic and small biz (5 or fewer employees). One of the things that surprised me was the approach to search that my non-technical clients take. Anecdotally, around half use Bing because they like Internet Explorer. Curiously, more than two thirds of these folks also have Chrome installed, so they can use Google; the misconception is that they _need_ Chrome in order to use Google _anything_. Chrome is use for Google, and nothing else. I don't recall a single person using Yahoo! across 300+ home and small office visits. Firefox is rarely seen, and if it does crop up it's usually because of a years-old recommendation from a trusted family member.
- agumonkey 12y ago
  Just like people thought internet was the blue 'e' on their desktop. Program, data, network .. no difference.
- rockdoe 12y ago
  the misconception is that they _need_ Chrome in order to use Google _anything_. Chrome is use for Google, and nothing else. Misconception?
  - petecooper 12y ago
    These clients think that Google Chrome is the one tool to use for Google services; that is to say, if you want to access Gmail, Google search, Google whatever, they must use Google Chrome to do it. Internet Explorer isn't to be used for that kind of thing. They consider Chrome to be an app to do purely Google things, and use IT for everything else.
    - Terr_ 12y ago
      I interpreted rockdoe's comment as: "A misconception implies it's accidental, but it's partly deliberate: Google wants to leverage their search-engine influence, convincing people they have no choice but to buy into a larger Google-Stuff ecosystem."
curiously 12y ago
Genius move. Partner with Firefox, compete with Chrome. Move the search fight to the browser, something that can be won unlike trying to force people to move away from typing google.com vs yahoo.com
amelius 12y ago
Search has imho become too much of both a privacy intrusion, and at the same time too much of a market determinant. I think the following has to happen. (Just thinking out loud). - Search has to be made into a replaceable service, or a commodity. This means that one could easily switch search providers without any other noticeable difference (to the user) than a difference in search results. - This means that search engines should be stripped of their user-interface. - Search engines should "be" simply APIs that browsers can hook into. An advantage of this, is that search engines could be denied the use of scripting, which disables the possibility of user tracking through "device fingerprinting". - Of course, if desired, the user could enable personalization. Personalization could be handled like it is now (through user tracking). But we could invent an API that reveals only a user's interests to a search agent. For example, you could reveal that you are researcher or a programmer, interested in technology, and certain programming languages, and you could list a set of webpages that you use regularly. - Of course, different profiles could be used for different searches. I imagine that the privacy-aware engines like DDG could start with the development and implementation of these protocols, and cooperate with e.g. mozilla for a base client implementation.
physcab 12y ago
There's actually a very simple answer for this. When you go to Yahoo.com on an iOS device it asks you if you want Yahoo to be the default search engine. Since Yahoo is a popular portal (I go to Yahoo news atleast a few times a day on my iOS device) people can inadvertently switch to Yahoo. This has happened to me numerous times and I couldn't figure out why. Then I figured out that Yahoo puts up a popup which I promptly clicked "ok" to get it out of the way, then wondered time and time again why my iPhone was always ignoring my default search preferences which was Google.
syoc 12y ago
That headline is probably the only way to make a 4% decline in search share sound like a lot. Bait.
QuantumGood 12y ago
Google search is heavily SEO gamed, and that makes their algorithm heavily weighted toward punishing page quality manipulation. If they could concentrate more on rewarding page quality instead, they could deliver better results (see the end of http://goo.gl/y0AXWO http://goo.gl/y0AXWO )

143 points by sanxiyn 12y ago

This isn't really much of a surprise, it was virtually guaranteed by the Firefox deal. As the article says, "I doubt Google needs to worry. For one, that’s probably the high water mark". Low-water mark (in terms of market share for Google) would probably be a better phrase, but the point is that unless Firefox grows a lot (which seems unlikely) the damage to Google is done.

SG- 12y ago
More damage could be done if Yahoo worked a deal with Apple to change the default search engine. At the end of the day tho it's all about money and Google has more of it.
- mattmanser 12y ago
  How is it about money?
  - mburns 12y ago
    Google pays Apple to be the default search provider.
    - 72deluxe 12y ago
      Bing is the default Spotlight and Safari search in Yosemite. I can find no way of changing it back to Google for Spotlight, which is incredibly irritating as I find the Bing results useless.
      - denzil_correa 12y ago
        The web search feature in Spotlight is equivalent to the search engine of your default browser.
        72deluxe 12y ago
        I don't think it is - the search engine option in Safari does not affect Spotlight. Spotlight is hardcoded.
      - petecooper 12y ago
        Not entirely what you're looking for, granted, but might help: http://flashlight.nateparrott.com http://flashlight.nateparrott.com
bad_user 12y ago
The Mozilla-Yahoo deal could turn out to be mutually beneficial in that regard. Yahoo for example has started to recommend Firefox to its users [1]. And Yahoo's market share should not be underestimated. On the list of most popular destinations, according to traffic rankings yahoo.com is number 4, being beaten only by google.com, facebook.com and youtube.com. And somehow Marissa Mayer has been turning the tide and I've seen positive things happening. For example I'm happy that they started developing Flickr again. Perceptions can change overnight and Google can certainly lose some more market share. I just hope that Yahoo! / Bing will improve their search for non-US users. Sadly for me Google provides the best search results and it's not even a competition. And it makes me sad, because while search engines are easily configurable in Firefox, I would have liked to support Mozilla indirectly with my searches and those of my acquaintances to which I'm recommending Firefox (pennies I know, but they add up). [1] http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/12/yahoo-starts-prompting-chrome-users-to-upgrade-to-firefox/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/12/yahoo-starts-prompting-chro...
blueskin_ 12y ago
>unless Firefox grows a lot (which seems unlikely) the damage to Google is done. Another way mozilla are their worst enemy. Making firefox into a chrome clone just drives away its users, while the masses they are trying to attract are staying on chrome because all they deliver is a compromised experience for the people who want firefox.

krisgenre 12y ago

Losing monopoly might actually be good for them.

IBM 12y ago
Not in the US. That's been settled already and Google spends too much money on lobbying for anyone to take a go at it (they also have a close relationship with the Obama administration).
- adventured 12y ago
  How would Google prevent a competing search engine from taking their market share via lobbyist spending or any connections they have to the Obama Administration?
  - CmonDev 12y ago
    By suppressing the "shouldn't we stop Google's monopoly" suggestions in senate or whatever other ways USA uses for governing itself.
    - raverbashing 12y ago
      Yeah, maybe we can have a government subsidised search engine, powered by the same people that did healthcare.gov right? I don't think there's any monopoly to be broken in search, it's just that the competitors aren't up to that level. (In other areas I might agree)
- nostrademons 12y ago
  It's not the legalities that's the real problem, it's the complacency that results from being the only game in town, and the ensuing attraction of employees who want a cushy gig with no real competition and exodus of employees who want to be challenged and pushed forwards.
- matthewmacleod 12y ago
  I don't think that's the point though – more that a decline in market share for Google may result in improvements. Nothing government or regulatory about it.

BorisMelnik 12y ago

Let's not forget this little metric: mobile. These stats were taken from Statcounter which is not a comprehensive representation of the marketshare. http://i.imgur.com/aOXsraC.png http://i.imgur.com/aOXsraC.png According to the same data, Google owns 87% of the mobile market, and I venture to guess that number is actually higher and will continue to climb in 2015 as mobile will continue to dominate the consumer market.

fulafel 12y ago
It's odd that Firefox isn't more popular on mobile, the competition lacks extension support so it should have a bigger edge.
- cheapsteak 12y ago
  Are extensions really useful for mobile browsers? Most things I use extensions for have their own apps (chromecast, hangouts, email)
  - fpgeek 12y ago
    I'm a big fan of Self-Destructing Cookies (on the desktop and on mobile).
  - coldpie 12y ago
    Good lord, yes. Have you ever browsed the web on mobile without AdBlock? It's nearly useless. Setting aside the bandwidth you're wasting, nearly every page redirects you to the app store or pops up a dozen shitty ads before you can see the content. I'm still baffled that ad networks allow advertisers to inject arbitrary javascript into their banner ads. Why on earth are they allowed to deliver anything other than an image? Anyways, I'll never browse the web without AdBlock again and I'm astounded that so many people are able to do so.
  - fulafel 12y ago
    With the current privacy hostile browser defaults, it's pretty much a must if you care about that department at all. (Of course it may be that nobody privacy conscious uses Android/iOS at all...)

aramadia 12y ago

f we assume a modest 1:4 US to world ratio and a difference of 4.1% as explained by the firefox switch, then the entire US firefox userbase is about 1% of the world. Google won't be sweating.

bzbarsky 12y ago
Firefox only switched to Yahoo in the US so far. And Yandex in Russia, and Baidu in China. It's using Google everywhere else, for now.

willvarfar 12y ago

What a clickbait title :) > Google’s slice of the U.S. search market fell to 75.2 percent in December from 79.3 percent a year ago, while Yahoo jumped to 10.4 percent from 7.4 percent I was expecting a landslide :)

sanxiyn 12y ago
Well, for Yahoo, 10.4% from 7.4% is 40% increase.

Animats 12y ago

Yes, choice of search engine is mostly by default. Most Bing searches come from Microsoft products where Bing is the default. One would think that Mozilla users would turn off Yahoo search immediately, but apparently some do not. Yahoo doesn't really have a search engine, and hasn't for five years. They resell Bing and add some in-house content. The only reason to search with Yahoo is if you want their in-house content. Bing is currently more literal-minded than Google. Google is using too much popularity-based machine learning to "correct" what you're searching for. It's become difficult on Google to search for a non-popular thing that happens to be close to a popular search target. Google does not treat quote marks as a mandatory exact match any more, just a hint. Running a search engine is so profitable that even the little guys with < 1% market share make money - Ask, InfoSeek, DuckDuckGo, and Blekko are all profitable. (Cuil blew it - no revenue model.) The most valuable ads on the Internet are the ones on search results, because they appear when someone is actively seeking something. Almost all other ads are interruptions. The only thing that keeps the phone vendors and carriers from entering the search engine business is huge payments from Apple, Google, and Bing. Microsoft's current approach to Bing is unusual. Bing used to have its own CEO; the last one was Satya Nadella, who is now CEO of Microsoft. Now, various parts of Bing are under five different Microsoft VPs who also have other responsibilities. Some people speculated that this was in preparation for closing down or selling off Bing, but that doesn't seem to be happening. Anyone know more about that?

AndrewKemendo 12y ago
Google is using too much popularity-based machine learning to "correct" what you're searching for. This is exactly right and something I have been arguing for a while. Google's algos are good for finding what is popular, not necessarily what is right (though these things often overlap).
Svip 12y ago
> The only reason to search with Yahoo is if you want their in-house content. Or wish to support Mozilla through their deal with Yahoo!.
- blueskin_ 12y ago

nchelluri 12y ago

I am a Firefox user, and the switch encouraged me to explore non-Google search engine alternatives. For my personal browsing I tried Yahoo for a few days but have since switched to using DuckDuckGo. It's definitely not bad. But for work, and for when I'm not satisfied with the results, I still use Google. In my opinion, it is a superior search engine.

adventured 12y ago
Isn't DuckDuckGo primarily powered by Bing, which also powers Yahoo? Or has this changed?
- kome 12y ago
  DDG uses yandex a lot, not bing.
  - adventured 12y ago
    No, they still use Bing (assuming their site is accurate) https://duck.co/help/results/sources https://duck.co/help/results/sources "DuckDuckGo gets its results from over one hundred sources, including DuckDuckBot (our own crawler), crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, which are stored in our own index), Yahoo! (through BOSS), Yandex, Yelp, and Bing."

unicornporn 12y ago

And Yahoo is Powered by Bing, right?

mtmail 12y ago
Yahoo used to be powered by Google around 2004 and was still loosing market share to Google. Blind tests with just the logo replaced (same web results) had users still prefer Google. It was crazy. Disclaimer: I worked on Yahoo search.

alexhektor 12y ago

Google scaled buys (e.g. toolbars/default searches) back massively while Yahoo bought up that traffic.

blueskin_ 12y ago

The main problem with google is that it's too 'smart' for its own good (smart tool makes stupid users). If I search for something, I don't want it to by default include a massive list of other 'helpful' things up to and including antonyms or different word order that changes the meaning (e.g. how "foo guide for bar users" == "bar guide for foo users" according to google). Google has been getting dumber ever since it stopped supporting + and "". Similarly, although most search engines (except DuckDuckGo) filter bubble people, it is by far the most pervasive and irritating with google. So far, every single person I have explained filter bubbles to has been weirded out by the idea and thanked me for telling them about it. Of course, the other reason Google loses ground is privacy - Yahoo is definitely not good on privacy, but at least they fought as hard as they could before their hand was forced where google capitulated immediately. I can't wait until in a year or two DuckDuckGo is as good as google (not as hard as it used to be)...

proexploit 12y ago
> Yahoo is definitely not good on privacy, but at least they fought as hard as they could before their hand was forced where google capitulated immediately. Can you share a source for that?
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/yahoo-fight-for-users-earns-company-special-recognition https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/yahoo-fight-for-users-...
  - proexploit 12y ago
    > Of course, it's possible more companies have challenged this secret surveillance, but we just don't know about it yet. And no other mention of Google in the article. Great that Yahoo fought them but it doesn't support your assertion that Google immediately gave in or cares less for privacy than Yahoo. Even better, the same source you provided (EFF's Who Has Your Back report: https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013 https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013) gives this as Yahoo's only positive mark while Google is 5/6.

petecooper 12y ago

I'm a mobile computer technician in rural north Cornwall, UK. My clients are domestic and small biz (5 or fewer employees). One of the things that surprised me was the approach to search that my non-technical clients take. Anecdotally, around half use Bing because they like Internet Explorer. Curiously, more than two thirds of these folks also have Chrome installed, so they can use Google; the misconception is that they _need_ Chrome in order to use Google _anything_. Chrome is use for Google, and nothing else. I don't recall a single person using Yahoo! across 300+ home and small office visits. Firefox is rarely seen, and if it does crop up it's usually because of a years-old recommendation from a trusted family member.

agumonkey 12y ago
Just like people thought internet was the blue 'e' on their desktop. Program, data, network .. no difference.
rockdoe 12y ago
the misconception is that they _need_ Chrome in order to use Google _anything_. Chrome is use for Google, and nothing else. Misconception?
- petecooper 12y ago
  These clients think that Google Chrome is the one tool to use for Google services; that is to say, if you want to access Gmail, Google search, Google whatever, they must use Google Chrome to do it. Internet Explorer isn't to be used for that kind of thing. They consider Chrome to be an app to do purely Google things, and use IT for everything else.
  - Terr_ 12y ago
    I interpreted rockdoe's comment as: "A misconception implies it's accidental, but it's partly deliberate: Google wants to leverage their search-engine influence, convincing people they have no choice but to buy into a larger Google-Stuff ecosystem."

curiously 12y ago

Genius move. Partner with Firefox, compete with Chrome. Move the search fight to the browser, something that can be won unlike trying to force people to move away from typing google.com vs yahoo.com

amelius 12y ago

Search has imho become too much of both a privacy intrusion, and at the same time too much of a market determinant. I think the following has to happen. (Just thinking out loud). - Search has to be made into a replaceable service, or a commodity. This means that one could easily switch search providers without any other noticeable difference (to the user) than a difference in search results. - This means that search engines should be stripped of their user-interface. - Search engines should "be" simply APIs that browsers can hook into. An advantage of this, is that search engines could be denied the use of scripting, which disables the possibility of user tracking through "device fingerprinting". - Of course, if desired, the user could enable personalization. Personalization could be handled like it is now (through user tracking). But we could invent an API that reveals only a user's interests to a search agent. For example, you could reveal that you are researcher or a programmer, interested in technology, and certain programming languages, and you could list a set of webpages that you use regularly. - Of course, different profiles could be used for different searches. I imagine that the privacy-aware engines like DDG could start with the development and implementation of these protocols, and cooperate with e.g. mozilla for a base client implementation.

physcab 12y ago

There's actually a very simple answer for this. When you go to Yahoo.com on an iOS device it asks you if you want Yahoo to be the default search engine. Since Yahoo is a popular portal (I go to Yahoo news atleast a few times a day on my iOS device) people can inadvertently switch to Yahoo. This has happened to me numerous times and I couldn't figure out why. Then I figured out that Yahoo puts up a popup which I promptly clicked "ok" to get it out of the way, then wondered time and time again why my iPhone was always ignoring my default search preferences which was Google.

syoc 12y ago

That headline is probably the only way to make a 4% decline in search share sound like a lot. Bait.

QuantumGood 12y ago

Google search is heavily SEO gamed, and that makes their algorithm heavily weighted toward punishing page quality manipulation. If they could concentrate more on rewarding page quality instead, they could deliver better results (see the end of http://goo.gl/y0AXWO http://goo.gl/y0AXWO )