MicroHOO: How The Merger Won't Change Anything
Friday, July 31, 2009
, Posted by ErinLeeParker at 11:33 AM
So my girl is at work, accounting for things, like accountants do. It's a little slow, so she shoots me an email:
So do you think the Microsoft and Yahoo merger is going to hurt Google?
After laughing hysterically, my response followed:
The real question is will this partnership significantly change market share percentages? Right now Google is holding down roughly 75% of the search market in the US (more in some European countries). That leaves a combined 25% left over for the other players including Yahoo/Bing, Ask, and the like. That’s substantial traffic, sure, and worth paying attention to. But what will the share look like in three years once the deal is done? More than likely, exactly how it looks today. Except Google will probably have a slightly higher share.
I just don’t see anything game changing here that will cause a mass exodus from the status quo. Where is the motivation for a user who has geen using Google for the last couple of years, probably has a gmail account, maybe uses Google docs to start using Yahoo/Bing? There is no innovation here. Microsoft essentially purchased market share that is entrenched, meaning they have probably been using Yahoo since the 90's. Unless there is a huge leap in search algorithm development, relevency will probably not be a factor for change as it was previously. Which leads me to believe that unless they focus on innovative products to keep users engaged, this power play for market share will have diminishing returns.
What I do know is that site owners who have ignored how their sites were ranking in Bing previously, due to low traffic numbers, better start paying a lot more attention now.
I just don’t see anything game changing here that will cause a mass exodus from the status quo. Where is the motivation for a user who has geen using Google for the last couple of years, probably has a gmail account, maybe uses Google docs to start using Yahoo/Bing? There is no innovation here. Microsoft essentially purchased market share that is entrenched, meaning they have probably been using Yahoo since the 90's. Unless there is a huge leap in search algorithm development, relevency will probably not be a factor for change as it was previously. Which leads me to believe that unless they focus on innovative products to keep users engaged, this power play for market share will have diminishing returns.
What I do know is that site owners who have ignored how their sites were ranking in Bing previously, due to low traffic numbers, better start paying a lot more attention now.
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