Vogel Internet, Information Technology and e-Discovery Blog : Texas Internet, Information Technology, eCommerce & E-Discovery Lawyer & Attorney Peter S. Vogel : Gardere Wynne Sewell Law Firm : Dallas TX

No surprise that Google’s search engine continues to grow at the expense of Yahoo! and Microsoft’s Bing. Hitwise now reports April 2010: Google at 71.4%, Yahoo! down 1% to to 14.96%, Bing down 2% to 9.43%, Ask down 37% to 2.18%, and the remaining 78 search engines accounted for 2.03%. As these search engine wars continue it seems pretty clear where we are headed. However antitrust issues are on the horizon!

EU confirms Google antitrust probe

The EU Commission confirmed that 3 complaints were filed and Google’s blog indicated that:

The complaints filed with the Commission came from U.K. price comparison site Foundem, a French legal search engine called eJustice.fr, and a German search site called Ciao that was recently acquired by Microsoft Corp. Google pointed out in its blog that Foundem is a member of a trade group called iComp, which is largely funded by Microsoft.

Given Bing decline it’s no wonder that Microsoft is pushing the EU to try to reduce Google’s control over the search engine market.

New Look: Google Search Engine Reults

To make Google even more user-friendly Google has evolved and morphed into a new look again. Check out Google’s new search engine results:

However, look closely since Google is now asking if users want Google to access to their location...privacy redflag if ever there be one!  Stay tuned for more Google in the market as Google dominates the search engine market and much more!

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Google added two new links for “My social circle” and “My social content” that permit Social Networking searches! This blending of the most popular search engine in the US with social networking is getting more interesting since “Google is striking real-time deals with both Facebook and MySpace. Updates from public pages on Facebook will appear in Google real-time search, as will any publicly posted comments on MySpace.” In the future hundreds of millions of friends on Facebook and MySpace will use Google to search.

Google “Show Options”

Many people may not have noticed that when you do a Google Search the results displays “Show options” which includes the following:

So whenever you do a Google search you can click on “>Any time, Latest” and you will find information that just happened seconds before. This service now permits real time searching rather than purely historical.

Twitter on Google and Bing

To make things a little more interesting Google just announced that it will add live results from Twitter searches. However Bing already has an early version http://www.bing.com/twitter. With the tremendous growth of Social Networking now blending into search engines seems logical and inevitable. Even though Google gives pointers on how to protect oneself with these new social network searches, Google still keeps searches for 18 months. It makes one wonder how private everyone’s information really is on Social Networks or Google.
 

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With all the press about the disaster for Google in China somebody had to benefit, and it turns out the predominant search engine Baidu will be the big winner. Baidu had 63.9% and Google had about 31.3% of China’s search engine’s market before the December attacks. Ironically Baidu was started by Li Yanhong, a.k.a. Robin Li in 2000 when he raised $26.2 million in venture funding including a modest investment from Google. Today Baidu has 7,000 employees and market value of $16.2 billion, however Google sold its stake in 2006. Google entered China in 2006 with an agreement to censor certain topics.  But whether Google departs or not, Baidu is sure to grow since many users of Google are worried about security. Of course that is ironic since many in China believe that Baidu censored a great deal more than Google.cn. 

Attack on Google

Apparently the attack on Google was through a security hole in Microsoft’s browser Internet Explorer (IE) including these versions:

IE 6 Service Pack 1 on Microsoft Windows 2000 SP4 has the bug. Moreover, the flaw exists in IE 6, IE 7 and IE 8 on supported editions of Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7, plus Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Some pundits are wondering why Google was using IE rather than Google’s browser Chrome, which is an interesting issue aside from the attack.

Microsoft's Ballmer: We're Staying in China

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer committed to stay in China even though Google appears to be ready to leave. “Google has been in China since 2006 operating under an agreement with the government that has the search giant purge banned topics from its Chinese search results. But the recent attack has Google saying it will no longer censor results per Chinese law and the company is threatening to pull out of the country altogether. “ Since Microsoft recently announced its plan to grow its search engine Bing in China it’s no wonder that Microsoft may stay notwithstanding censorship and vulnerability with IE.

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The EU finally concluded its antitrust case against Microsoft by allowing customers to select browsers from a variety of 12 options including Google (Chrome), Apple (Safari), Mozilla (Firefox), and Opera. Under the plan “in March Microsoft will issue an update that enables the more than 100 million European users of Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 to choose among a variety of browsers available for installation in addition to -- or instead of -- its Internet Explorer.” Since Microsoft will remain liable for fines it is likely that Internet Explorer’s market share will decline to the benefit of others.

How Can Bing Compete in China?

Microsoft recently announced that it planned to enlarge Bing (its search engine) in China:

"Microsoft is committed to the China market and the search market in China is the most important strategic market for Microsoft," Microsoft told Reuters on Dec. 29. "We specifically set the search technology center in China to get a deeper understanding of what Chinese users need, to be able to deliver the best product to them."

However:

“According to research company Analysys International, as cited by Reuters, Chinese search engine Baidu currently leads the country's search engine market with 63.9 percent, followed by Google with 31.3 percent. Meanwhile, another research company estimated that Bing (which launched in China in June, and is still technically a beta) occupied less than 1 percent of the Chinese search engine market in the second quarter of 2009.”

So the likelihood of a Bing’s success seems remote any time soon.

Google Still Dominates

Since Google’s search engine continues to grow in the US and China it seems unlikely that Microsoft can make any inroads unless Microsoft changes its business plans. There is an increase in the use of cloud computing for business around the world which makes it debatable if users need new operating systems to replace older systems whether Microsoft, Apple, or Linux. Right now it is hard to tell how Microsoft’s new operating system Windows 7 will fare. If it is not a fabulous success, maybe Microsoft will only get smaller throughout the world.

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No major changes in the war over search engines in past two months, first place Google grew to 65.4% (+.5%), second place Yahoo! declined to 18% (-.8%), and third place Bing (Microsoft’s newly named engine formerly “Live Search) grew to 9.9% (+.5%). Interestingly the two greatest search increases are for YouTube (+7%) and Bing (+8). So messages can we get from the US search engine competition? Well for starters Google’s and Bing’s growth make sense, but what about the decline for Yahoo!? These numbers may make a Microsoft Bing alliance with Yahoo! more likely.

Wolfram|Alpha -Bing’s New Ingredient?

Microsoft recently announced that Bing would add an enhancement that relies on the computational information from the relatively new search engine named Wolfram|Alpha. There is a video interview of Stephen Wolfram on a Microsoft blog in which he says "What we’re seeing with Microsoft and Bing now is a first step toward taking computational knowledge and deploying it in an application, in this case a search engine."

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

I assume everyone knows that the SEO industry has grown dramatically over the past 14 years (since the 4th Big Bang of free Internet Explorer with Windows 95), and one can even get a SEO Certification. Of course SEO is a success because Google and most search engines save all user inquiries for 18 months so that search engines can monetize this information and also as by-product maybe help improve the value of searches for users and websites. Stay tuned as SEO and search engines continue to evolve.

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Watching the world economy meltdown in the past year it’s not much of a surprise that Google value increased by about 25% to number 7 in the world with an estimated value to an $32B! Other technology companies did not fare as well as reported by BusinessWeek and Interbrand:IBM increased by about 2%, Microsoft lost about 4%, Intel declined by 2%, and Oracle lost 1%. So Google’s growth during the down economy means that Google must be doing many things right.

Google Could Become The Leader Source of News

With the announcement of Fast Flip Google now has a site where users can get all the news they need without ever leaving Google. Google reports that the “service is being initiated with the cooperation of about three dozen publishers, including major news outlets like BBC News, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Newsweek; magazines like Cosmopolitan, The Atlantic, Esquire and Good Housekeeping; and Web-only publications like TechCrunch, Salon.com and Slate.” In the meantime Microsoft added a service to Bing called Visual Search which adds a new way to view news and expand the uses of Bing search engine. Given the troubles in the newspaper world is any wonder that Google and Microsoft have new plans to take greater roles in news?

Google Finally Using DoubleClick to Boost Display Ads

After making a fortune on small text ads now Google will make redirect its energy to boosting display ads. No one should be surprised by Google use of DoubleClick to migrate to displays ads and be in direct competition with Yahoo! Yahoo! is the current king of display ads and Google’s move will definitely impact Yahoo!’s advertising revenue. We need to stay tuned to see how things play for Google and Yahoo! Stay tuned.
 

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