Microsoft New OS Fail
Make no bones about it – Google and Microsoft are playing hardball these days.
The two tech giants continued to launch shots across each other’s bow late yesterday when Google played a trump card with its Chrome operating system.
Microsoft has been building noise for its Gazelle browser/OS hybrid for a while now, but Google published news last night that appears to have stolen Microsoft’s show.
This news comes on the heels of the Bing versus Google “battle” for search engine market share.
I say “battle” because it really isn’t a fair fight. Sure, Microsoft has thrown reportedly tens of millions of dollars behind Bing for a marketing campaign – but has it worked?
Tongues were sent wagging across the internet when Bing overtook Yahoo for second place in the search engine race. For. A. Day.
Furthermore, there has been a lot of commotion about Bing scooping of market share throughout the US from Google, Yahoo, AOL, Ask and others.
Let’s make something perfectly clear. While the US is a large, and albeit important, chunk of the global search engine market, it is only a portion.
World Internet Usage
In fact, of the estimated 1.59 billion internet users spread out across the globe, the United States represents only about 14 percent of them.
The geographical section of Asia (China, Japan, India, South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Pakistan, Malaysia, Taiwan – as defined by InternetWorldStats) comprises a staggering 41.2 percent of the global internet users.
And guess what search engine is most used by the world? Yup – Google.
Global Search Engine Usage
While Google holds a “mere” 81.08 percent of the search engine market share in the United States, it has a stranglehold of 89.05 percent globally (as of July 6, 2009).
And here’s another fun statistic: While so much has been written about Bing and the impact it might have on the industry, from July 1, 2008 to July 6, 2009 Google has actually INCREASED its global search engine market share!
But in the US – where Bing has supposedly made such a splash? Google grew its market share from 79.03 percent from July 1 2008 to 81.08 percent on July 7 2009.
US Search Engine Usage
So why is Google not concerned about Microsoft? Because Google is the internet’s leading search engine, and the internet is global. Decision engine or not, Microsoft has to be running scared.
They aren’t winning any share of mind in the search engine industry, and now Google is going right after their bread and butter – the operating system market.
I’m not about to write off Microsoft and their share of the OS market just yet. Linux-based operating systems are nothing new, but they have yet to make much of a dent in Microsoft’s near monopoly of the industry.
Nevertheless, Google is right where it wants to be…on top of the search engine market share, on the top Twitter trending topics, and keeping Microsoft off balance and running to catch up!
By: Zack S.
Tags: Bing, Chrome OS, global internet users, Google, Google Chrome OS, Google on Twitter, search engine market share
[...] as I’ve said before, the internet is global. Search is global. While Bing holds an okay 8.22 percent of the US search engine market (as of September 1, 2009), [...]