The title of this article says it all. Most everyone knows the order of market share for search engines, even people who are not in the industry. We all know that in terms of search volume Google is 1, Yahoo is 2, and Microsoft is 3. According to my Microsoft rep, their market share is about 13.6%. I believe she said they use comScore data and that comScore rates them slightly lower than others.
This is what I was shown as accurate historical market share for Microsoft. I will say that from what I have heard from Microsoft, they are in online advertising for the long haul. They have many new things coming out and I am really intrigued by several of them. They should continue to see a rise in market share from current changes, but they have yet to integrate the cornerstone of their company, software. I mean Jesus (not literally), the possibilities are endless if they can integrate it properly.
If Live search can be correctly and cleanly integrated into Office, hell just Word alone, it would be a huge boost for them. Can you image the ability to select a portion of text in your word document, right click, and hit search. It would then interface directly into Live’s search results and provide results for the text you selected. That is just one option for implementation, even just a search box in the toolbar area would be a huge improvement for them. I wonder why something like this wasn’t included in the release of office 2007?
Now obviously, I have not taken into account legal ramifications of bundling search in with Microsoft’s products. I am not a legal expert, or really even that knowledgeable about monopoly laws, but I am sure Microsoft could find a way around them. It seems to me that the next large battlefield for search juggernauts will be search integration.
