Google is losing ground as rival search engines grow
Mozilla’s move to make Yahoo default search engine, among other things, have led to Google’s search dominance being reduced
Your support helps us to tell the story
As your White House correspondent, I ask the tough questions and seek the answers that matter.
Your support enables me to be in the room, pressing for transparency and accountability. Without your contributions, we wouldn't have the resources to challenge those in power.
Your donation makes it possible for us to keep doing this important work, keeping you informed every step of the way to the November election
Andrew Feinberg
White House Correspondent
Soon, we might “Bing” for information rather than Google it. The latter’s dominance of the search engine market is being reduced, with its share of the market falling the most since 2009.
Much of the traffic is being taken from Yahoo, which has seen its highest share for five years, according to new data from StatCounter. But Bing is still bigger than Yahoo, with 12.5% of searches.
Google still has a huge dominance of the market, with 77.3% of searches in November. But that fell to 75.2% in December, its lowest since StatCounter started tracking search statistics in July 2008.
Much of that drop was driven by Yahoo’s new partnership with Mozilla, StatCounter said. In November Mozilla said that it would use Yahoo as the default search in its browser rather than Google.
"The move by Mozilla has had a definite impact on US search," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. "The question now is whether Firefox users switch back to Google."
Firefox users represented just over 12% of internet usage in the US, according to Statcounter.
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments