What’s 70% of 70%
November 6, 2008
You do not have to be a math whiz to figure out the reach of Google. ZDNet makes a service available called ITFacts. You can find the service here. A fact that caught my attention carried the headline ‘73% of Americans Go Online in 2008.’ If we figure 300 million Americans, that works out to a couple hundred million people who go online. You can see the original data set here. How does this pertain to search?
First, the Internet has become the equivalent of the printing press with a dollop of TV and telephony tossed in to add zest to the utility. Second, the company able to reach the most people via this medium has a grip on the throttle. If we accept the estimate that Google controls 70% of the search market in the US, that translates to Google’s having more influence than almost any other single company since the days of Ma Bell.
I am in Europe and just left a meeting during which several references were made to the breadth of Google’s services. What is 70% of 70%? I think it looks like a phase change in some markets toward Google. Regulators are not likely to find themselves able to keep pace with either Google or the growing doubt about what Google represents and is no longer able to keep under wraps.
My stance in these situations is, ‘After the company’s decade of rapid growth, there is nothing new to me in this grousing.’ I say, ‘You folks are worrying about nine years too late.’ With search as essential as email, Google is no longer a search and advertising company. It is a different construct. I am gratified that a few more people are perceiving Google more clearly at this time.
Stephen Arnold, November 5, 2008
Comments
2 Responses to “What’s 70% of 70%”
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
Stephen, there’s a perhaps unwarranted leap here —
“If we accept the estimate that Google controls 70% of the search market in the US, that translates to Google’s having more influence than almost any other single company since the days of Ma Bell.”
Google claims not to favor any Web publisher in computing search rankings, so other than influencing the design of Web pages since folks are going to want them Google-findable, how does delivering more searches than another other Web search engine translate into influence?
Seth
Seth Grimes,
Thanks for the question.
Stephen Arnold, November 6, 2008