The Un-Google - The Search Competition

WinEveryGame writes "The Economist is running an article on the state of the competition for Internet Search. While Google clearly dominates, and continues to have positive momentum, its leadership is still vulnerable. The search-engine battle is not over yet." From the article: "In terms of momentum — mass times velocity — Google's lead indeed looks daunting. It has by far the most mass, with an American market share of 43% as of April, which reaches 50% counting AOL, an internet property that uses Google's search technology. This compares with 28% for Yahoo!; 13% for MSN, which belongs to Microsoft; and 6% for Ask, which is owned by IAC/Interactive Corp, a conglomerate of about 60 online media brands. Google also has velocity: its market share grew by 17% in the four quarters to this spring, whereas Yahoo! and MSN both lost share. Only Ask has more velocity — its share grew by 35% — but then again it has little mass."

The Real Stats

[Nutmegan]

I don't know how they measured the dominance of these search engines, but I know how its supposed to be done: by the number of hits it gets on Google. In that respect, Google: 9,630,000,000 Yahoo: 5,240,000,000 MSN: 4,220,000,000 Ask: 2,140,000,000 Clearly, though, the most dominant search is the word "search" itself. It gets 16,670,000,000 hits.

Re:The Many New Possible Fronts

[Alex P Keaton in da]

Googling "Search Engine" returns 2,190,000,000 results.
The top 5 results?
1.Dogpile Web Search Home Page
2.Search Engine Watch: Tips About Internet Search Engines & Search ...
3.Lycos
4.MetaCrawler Web Search Home Page - MetaCrawler
5.Mamma Metasearch search engines on the Internet.
Google is 8th!!!!
Granted DogPile and Mamma include Google results, but it appears Google is no longer relevant. In today's world, you are judged by your Google ranking. Google is 8th when you google Search Engines. They are a has been....

Momentum?

[Intron]

The article totally fails to take Lorentz-FitzGerald Contraction into account.

obligatory SW parody

[oni]

Obwan: that search engine is our last hope
Yoda: no, there is another

(later)

Yoda: google... page rank is strong with you... pass on what you have indexed... there... is... another... search engi(ugh)

velocity, acceleration?

[MADnificent]

Shouldn't it have to be:

m = mass -> $$$
v = velocity -> users
a = acceleration -> growth

This way you can see how much energy a company has, and thus it's importance (m*v*v/2), growth can end *very* fast.
The energy a company gains is m*a*v, that shows that google is the best growing company...

etc.