Does everyone love Google?

Google’s Internet search popularity in the US is only growing. Over the past three years, the speed with which Google occupies the search market has been increasing. Many people think that, ultimately, Google will become the only search engine and there will be nothing left of its competitors.

Undoubtedly, antitrust law is a growing danger for the company. Last year, the company did not conclude a much-coveted agreement with Yahoo on reciprocal advertising. The Justice Department assured Google that it would block the deal. Last week, the small company TradeComet.com sued Google; She believes that Google is manipulating its advertising system in such a way as to harm potential competitors.

When I asked for a meeting with Google’s chief economist (I wanted to discuss why the rate of market absorption is increasing), I was also invited to meet with Dana Wagner, a key player in antitrust law.

Google believes that its leadership in search is not significant, and that it can evaporate with one click.
But take a look at comScore research: in July 2005 Google outperformed Yahoo by 6 percent 36.5 versus 30.5, today the gap is more than 40 percent, 63 versus 21.

“Google can be pitied,” says Danny Sullivan, chief editor of Search Engine Land. “They really work well and people choose their product. But when they occupied more than 70 percent of the market, people began to think that Google was evil and became a monopoly. ”

Google does not consider monthly fluctuations in the number of requests; comScore estimates for January show a fall in Google’s share of 0.5 percent compared to December, which was earned by Yahoo, Hitwise estimates that Google’s share in the US market is 72 percent compared to 17.9 for Yahoo and 5.4 for search engines Microsoft, MSN, and Live.com.

Mr. Sullivan believes that while Yahoo is actively promoting its search in its services, such as Yahoo Mail, the possibility of attracting third-party users is very small.

Many site owners who track where their users come from report 80-90 percent of clicks from google.com. For example, almost all visitors to Stack Overflow (a community of programmers who ask and answer questions) coming from search engines come from google.com. In January, more than 3 million people visited Stack Overflow, they came from 22 search sites, of which 99.34 percent google.com.

Jeff Atwood, one of the founders of Stack Overflow, “I don’t have problems with Google, I like Google, but I’m worried if nothing changes, it’s easy to predict what will happen in 4 years, just look at the graph, the world without competition does not look healthy” .

At Google, chief economist Hal Varian and Mr. Wagner says people have no blind commitment to a single search engine, they cite a recent Forrester Research study in which 55 percent of adults surveyed use more than 1 search engine per week.

“You buy a car, drive it for 4 years, then you start choosing a new one, but it’s different for search, we fight for every click, if more and more people use Google, then this is because they think that it’s better” , Mr. Wagner.

Mr. Sullivan has been studying search engines since 1995, he says that similar studies were carried out quite often, all of them could not prove that the user has affection for one of the search engines. When the user uses the alternative, he does not try to evaluate or test the search engine, just then he uses his favorite site, the one he is used to, Google is a habit, and habits are very difficult to change.

Yahoo and Microsoft, based on internal research, claim that their search engines have reached the same quality as Google, but this is not the main thing.

“No matter where we are, slightly ahead or behind Google in relevance, this is not a decisive argument,” said Prabhakar Raghavan, chief search strategist at Yahoo.

Yahoo’s chance is to offer a radically new way of providing information to users so that the user can complete the work they have begun, such as finding a job or buying a plane ticket. “People don’t like to search, it's just a waste of time,” Mr. Raghavan, “They want to finish the job.”

What Yahoo and Microsoft are unable to achieve is brand recognition; in fact, the word Google became a verb in 2002. Mr. Raghavan defines Google as a synonym for search.

I asked Mr. Sullivan, should we use several search engines to “maintain” competition. He replied that such an approach was difficult to implement. "Most likely, I will continue to use what I like and this is Google, if you think that someone should use the search from Microsoft, this is the same thing to say, you have to find a new best friend."

www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/business/22digi.html?ref=technology