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Google has increased its share of the UK search market by almost 10 points over the past year, and has now reached a monopoly market share of 87.3%, according to Hitwise. Yahoo's share of the market slumped from 8.6% to 4.1%.
This is, of course, exactly the sort of thing you would expect in a competitive technology market, according to the power laws. However, while this kind of result is predictable in markets where there are strong network effects, such as operating systems, processors etc (well, unless you seem utterly clueless, like the European Commision), it's impressive to see it working so well with Google, where people can more easily switch to an alternative.
Progress is a little slower in the US, where Google's market share of search grew from 65.1% to 68.3% over the past year, on Hitwise numbers. But its share will continue to grow unless Yahoo or Microsoft can come up with a product that is obviously very much better than Google (being as good or just a bit better isn't enough) or Google manages some sort of privacy screw up. Even then, it would have to be a biggie.
Meanwhile if you want to play on the web, commercially speaking, then you have to play by Google's rules, because it can delist your site at any time, without notice, or just devalue it. If your business depends on getting 30% to 60% of its traffic from Google searches, you certainly know which side your bread is buttered.... though that's not going to stop some people trying to game the system with linkfarms, splogs and other SEO (search engine optimization) scams.
"Google's rules" are good for us, of course. We could be a lot worse off....
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