Google leads the search engine industry holding 80% of the European market share

comScore.com has recently released the March 2008 statistics for European search engine market share. Google’s figures are very impressive: according to comScore.com data, nearly 8 out of 10 search queries originate from Google’s web site. Google currently has 79.2% of the search market share in Europe, meaning that we can talk about a unopposed monopoly of the Mountain View-based company.

Surprisingly, as number two in the EU market (not an entirely “official” number two) is eBay, but its not even a downright search engine. However, eBay holds the number two position and its market share is ridiculous compared to Google’s percentage. The auction site is just at 3.1%. But the worst has yet to come, following in number three we have Russian search engine, Yandex, whilst Yahoo! has only 2.0%, followed by Microsoft, at 1.9%.

These statistics are pushing me to two conclusions. Number one, in Europe Google seems really invincible: there is no competition, which leaves Google as the unquestioned leader in online search and it is the main door for European users to get connected to the Internet. The fact that eBay holds the second place, considering it does not qualify as a search engine as does Yahoo! Search and Live Search, it is definitely an aspect that strongly underlines Google’s leverage.

Secondly, the EU search market looks very different from the U.S. market mainly because here in Europe, Google’s competitors are not able to offer a valid alternative to surfers. Personally, I think this is the point: if we compare Yahoo.com’s services with correspondent ones on Yahoo.it, Yahoo.fr and so on, we will find that non-U.S services show several flaws.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Marketing Analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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