Is Google's default search engine dominance under threat?

[Whitey]

Several news articles surfacing over the last few months seem to show a trend of stories around key devices and accessories defaulting users to Bing or Yahoo etc. Here's a snapshot of a few, that I chanced on, that others may well be aware of :

Apple could dump Google from its mobile web browser [businessinsider.com.au...]

Google Goes After Firefox Users With Results-Page Plea [au.pcmag.com...]

Today I upgraded Skype to the latest version, with Bing listed as a default preference [ I didn't feel strongly compelled to avoid the switch ] ?

This is no longer the same territory as a few years back. A lot of usage is on mobile - so who cares for the small screen sized Google search engine any more.

Are the above tactics by competitors going to eat into Google's search market with Bing and the lesser size engines? Or perhaps a Baidu or Yandex entry strategy.

Is Google's sacred search ground dominance safe from user's not caring and switching to the plethora of device/accessories options out there ... what's your sense of emerging trends around these tactics.

[mcneely]

I don't believe that Google's position as the dominant adserver in the world is threatened either ... Google stopped being a "Search" Engine years ago, so I'm not seeing what all of the fuss is about ...

[Whitey]

I guess it also depends on how you define the search process :

Bing has a 12 per cent market share in search, and Google has 75 per cent - even more than its share in 2009. Other rivals keep trying to chip away — Yahoo recently picked up a couple of market-share points and now holds 10.6 percent — but it appears that in the traditional search engine market, the game is over, and Google has won.

But the real threat to Google's search business doesn't come from Microsoft or Yahoo. It comes from Amazon and Facebook, and from the changing habits of online shoppers. Amazon and Facebook aren't in the search business, strictly speaking, but increasingly people turn to these sites to learn about products. In other words, the challenge to Google is not that competitors will take over the traditional search engine market but that traditional search engines will become less relevant as search takes place on other sites. "Our biggest search competitor is Amazon," Schmidt acknowledged last October. " ... They are obviously more focused on the commerce side of the equation, but, at their roots, they are answering users' questions and searches, just as we are." [smh.com.au...]

[Brett_Tabke]

> firefox popup

I've been getting the "switch to chrome" ads for YEARS because I use Opera - they have been up almost since day 1 of the Chrome release.

[mcneely]

... search engines will become less relevant as search takes place on other sites ...

Google shouldn't have did the big dookie to the Ecommerce niches back in the day me thinks -

Google has to worry about all of those 3rd party sellers out there that have hooked up with the big boys like Best Buy and Amazon ...

"... they are answering users' questions and searches, just as we are."

.. and in many ways, these other sites are answering those questions much better than Google can.