Google's dominance remains practically unchallengeable

Google will continue to be the most popular search entity. It dominates the organic search market and has nearly absolute power in the paid-advertising arena. Having beat Microsoft to the deal with AOL, Google enters 2006 even more powerful than it entered 2005. Nothing less than a major earthquake in the Valley will shift Google's dominance of search in 2006.

Google challenges pay-for-play search
By Stefanie Olsen
Staff Writer
Published: February 5, 2002, 5:40 PM PST

Paid-search company Overture Services has some new competition: Google.

EarthLink quietly relaunched its search page last month using Google technology and advertisements after the Internet service provider decided not to renew its relationship with Overture, formerly known as GoTo.com. EarthLink and Google plan to formally announce the relationship later this week. The two companies would not disclose financial terms of the deal.

For Google, the partnership marks its first foray into advertising syndication. The company said earlier this year that its AdWords--text-based ads that are triggered by keyword searches--would be offered as an optional benefit to its many search partners, which include Yahoo and Sony. EarthLink is the first of its syndication partners. The move pits search purist Google against the purely commercial engine of Overture. Google has long cloistered itself from the growing leagues of paid-listings services by generating search results according to a proprietary formula that does not include commercial criteria. The company has also sought to distinguish its AdWords from rivals' advertising, arguing that they are highly targeted and clearly marked. By syndicating its ads as "sponsored links" on partner sites, however, the company is tapping revenue once thought only the purview of commercial search.

Google Challenges Yahoo

By Tom Krazit
April 30, 2002 9:31 am PT

SEARCH-ENGINE TECHNOLOGIES WERE among the first services to appear on the Internet, and their popularity continues today. More searches continue to be performed through Yahoo's Web portal, but Google's site is quickly closing in on the leader.

Of all search referrals worldwide, 36.35 percent come from Yahoo, while Google trails close behind with 31.87 percent, according to figures from market researcher WebSideStory, which released the results of a tracking study by its StatMarket division Tuesday.

Microsoft's MSN network placed third with 12.73 percent of worldwide search referrals.

StatMarket defined search referrals as "the percentage of daily Internet users that arrive at a Web page via a particular search site," it said in a statement. The study data was gathered from the 125,000 client sites that use the Hitbox Web analysis services from WebSideStory, which attract 50 million daily Internet users, said a WebSideStory spokeswoman. The company used cookies -- small software programs stored on a user's computer -- and tags in a client Web site's code to gather the search referral data, she said.

Google is one of the few search engines that focuses just on search technology, unlike Yahoo and MSN, which feature broad categories of services and features. Google also provides the back-end technology for searches conducted through Yahoo and Netscape's site, although only searches originating from Google's site are included in the statistics above.

While Yahoo's search engine numbers are declining, the company does enjoy a leading presence in several Internet categories, including finance, music and personal Web page services. Despite the strength of its brand, the company has struggled with sustaining profitability, and now charges fees for services that were previously free, including a premium search service.

The two companies are headed in different directions, according to WebSideStory: Search engine referrals from Google have risen from 1 percent in June of 2000 to the current level, while Yahoo's numbers have dropped from 46 percent of all referrals in the same time frame.

Tom Krazit is a Boston-based copy editor for IDG News Service, an InfoWorld affiliate.

Vint Cerf on Google's challenges, aspirations
IDG News Service 11/23/2005

Juan Carlos Peréz, IDG News Service, Miami Bureau
Internet pioneer Vint Cerf, Google's chief Internet evangelist, recently chatted with IDG News Service about a variety of topics related to the Mountain View, California, search giant. Cerf, considered one of the fathers of the Internet for his work as co-designer of TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol), talked about Google's current challenges, the mashups phenomenon of creating new applications by blending data and tools from multiple Web sites, the Google Book Search controversy and the company's aspirations in the enterprise space. Below is an edited transcript of the conversation.

Software Powers Talk Out Google Challenge

(URL: http://www.crn.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=174400425)

By Barbara Darrow,

6:15 PM EST Sat. Nov. 19, 2005

The line between Web-based applications and their inside-the-firewall counterparts is getting fuzzier by the minute, according to several high-tech leaders. And that's causing a lot of angst among tech providers.

Google hopes to penetrate the corporate sanctum with its search appliance and other offerings. Meanwhile, legacy software makers, epitomized by Microsoft, are trying to adapt to a new software as a service (SaaS) worldview.

Google, with its pile of cash, is able to buy its way--at least initially--into any market. The Mountain View, Calif. Internet search kingpin bought Urchin a few months ago and "pretty much started giving away" its Web analytics, said Rafiq Mohammadi, CTO of Interwoven, Sunnyvale, Calif., maker of enterprise content management systems at Saturday's annual Harvard Business School Cyberposium in Boston.

Microsoft, which derives billions from the "rich client" world of Windows and Office, clearly sees the threat, but seems positioned to straddle a world of thin and thick clients. One partner says its plan is to have offerings for three scenarios, "thin client, fat network" where most functionality resides in the cloud; "fat client, thin network," which is basically the old Windows and Office model; and a hybrid for companies who want to mix and match such capabilities as needed.

"The challenges are interesting," said Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president of Microsoft's Office business. He said many corporate customers still prefer on-premise software and systems that are under their control. (Microsoft just made early code of Office 12 suite to a limited number of testers.)

Microsoft's LiveMeeting conferencing software sits on the Internet cloud and "competes vigorously with Webex," he noted. "But there are a number of customers, actually a huge number, who won't go near it because we run it on our servers. I won't argue if that's right or wrong, but it's a very difficult challenge."