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Archive for the ‘MSN’ Category
Nielsen/Netratings Reports on Search Market Share
Mike Mothner | September 25th, 2007
Last week Nielsen/Netratings released the August 2007 results on the top 10 search providers in the United States. Not surprisingly, Google continues to reign supreme, taking home 53.6% of searches and recording a 39.8% year-over-year growth in total searches. According to Nielsen, they recorded nearly 4.2 billion searches — in August alone. That amounts to nearly 50 billion searches a year, a number which is simply impossible to fathom. That averages out to over 166 searches in Google annually for every adult, child, and baby in the United States. Following not even close to the heels of Google was Yahoo, tallying a 19.9% share of searches. The biggest gainer in the bunch was MSN, which recorded over a billion searches in August, and had 69.8% year over year growth. They came in third with a 12.9% share of searches. I can only assume that this massive jump is due to the release of the Windows Vista OS, which come loaded with MSN search as the default search preference for users. Looking at these numbers, it is hard to fathom anybody truly challenging Google’s lead. There are still plenty of ways that Google can trip up, from the recent privacy concerns to simply the law of large numbers preventing Google from continuing such absurd growth (though this still does not diminish their market share, just potentially their sky-high stock price). Save this Post!
MSN Slings Mud as Google Encroaches
Michael Block | September 13th, 2007
In the same week that Google got into bed with Capgemini to help it break into the business application market, MSN criticized Google’s ability to produce such programs up to the standards that consumers are used to seeing from companies like (oh, I don’t know) Microsoft, for example. CNET News covers the blow-by-blow in wonderful detail, however, I did want to highlight one quotation in particular from a Microsoft rep in an address from Monday: “We believe competition is good for customers and the industry. That said, customers tell us that our solutions deliver the ease of use, reliability and security that enterprises need.” Let’s pause here. Okay, have you stopped laughing yet? You don’t have to be Steve Jobs to know that the one thing that Microsoft cannot tolerate is competition. Well, let me rephrase that: Microsoft loves competition, just not competition that it cannot trample, buy out or render obsolete through immense investment in R&D. Okay, let’s proceed with more of the quotation: “[Google's] enterprise focus and now apps exist on the very fringe, and in combination with other fringe services only account for 1 percent of the company’s revenue. What happens if Google executes poorly? Do they shut (them) down given it will (affect) them in a minimal and short-term way? Should customers trust that this won’t happen?” Touché, Microsoft. This is truly a sound criticism and, to be sure, no company knows more about a service suffering as a result of low priority than Microsoft. Working Continue reading…
