PaulSpoerry.com

According to TechCrunch Google ended the year with 63.5 percent market share of all search queries performed in the U.S., estimates comScore. And that market share has inched up steadily from 58.5 percent in January, 2008. But the market share numbers mask the absolute growth in searches and how Google has ben able to Gobble up all of that growth.

The chart above tells a clearer story. It comes out of the comScore 2008 Digital Year In Review, and shows the share of raw number of search queries in the U.S captured by the five major search engines. All the lines are pretty flat, except Google’s (the purple one). Of the 137 billion estimated total searches performed in the U.S. last year, 85 billion were done on Google.

What’s even more impressive is that nearly 90 percent of all the growth in search volume was also captured by Google. Most of that growth came from increasing the number of searches per person, rather than bringing more people to Google.

View the original article on TechCrunch.

Long ago the king of the browsers was Netscape. Microsoft turned their massive shift very quickly once they realized exactly how important the browser would be to the future of computing and brought Internet Explorer in line with Netscape… and then the browser wars began. As a web developer I can tell you those years SUUUCKED. Each company would include “features” that only worked with their browser, build web apps when the web was young was difficult (I realize this still exists, but nothing like it did back in the day).

Last month, Microsoft’s market share in the browser dropped below 70% for the first time in eight years, while Mozilla broke the 20% barrier for the first time in its history. Initial data sets provided by Net Applications suggest that the Internet Explorer will drop once again significantly in December to below 69% and Mozilla will climb above 21%.

This doesn’t mean IE is out… 69% is still the lions share but it shows that other browsers are making in-roads to Microsoft’s stranglehold on browser marketshare.  The contenders are FireFox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera. FireFox is clearly in the lead as the primary competitor to IE. I personally use FireFox as my daily browser; when the next release comes out and their uber JavaScript engine is in place I can’t see myself going back to IE for anything unless it requires it. Chrome has the mighty Google backing it… it seems Google can do very little wrong lately and Chrome fits nicely into their long term strategy. However, Chrome is still immature in comparison to FireFox at this point.

For crazy detailed stats on each browser gain, decline, etc check out How serious is the market share loss of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer? at TGDaily.com.

I agree with the summary of the authors of the article… I’m stunned at how Microsoft is just letting this happen. Web apps may not be able to counter desktop apps yet (ok GMail is CLOSE… if they’d just get the contacts to sync correctly!); let’s face it… Photoshop via the web ain’t happening anytime soon. However, more and more applications are moving to the cloud. Google understands this and is pushing it agressively, MICROSOFT knows this and is building out cloud architecture… so I’m completely baffled as to why they would allow this to happen. IE8 beta’s appear to be a dude… slow, proprietary, and still not comforming to standards. Whereas the new-comers are quick, have excellent plugin architectures, the new rendering engines used in Chrome and the next release of FireFox make “web 2.0″ site rawk. I guess the best we can hope for at this point is that Microsoft has a card up it’s sleeve for when Windows 7 comes out.

Net Applications, published some interesting data about Mozilla’s Firefox in this month’s newsletter. Specifically, they’re projecting that users of the world’s favorite alternative browser will account for 20% of all web traffic sometime in July.

“Net Applications Global Internet Usage Market Share for May 2008 shows Firefox gaining more momentum,” said Vince Vizzaccaro, executive vice president, marketing. “Firefox market share for May was 18.41% up from 17.76% in April. If recent trends continue, Firefox should achieve 20% market share some time in July.”

Source: Net Applications

It’s all in the timing

However, with Firefox 3 RC 1 already in circulation and the full release expected soon, Mozilla may be able to steal a march and shoot past 20% before the end of June.

Firefox 3 RC 1 has been my browser of choice, I love the thing. Already, prerelease versions of Firefox 3 account for close to 1% of web traffic as measured by Net Applications

Lastly, SpreadFirefox.com is planning a major marketing push for the release of Firefox 3 with the Download Day 2008 promotion, whereby backers hope to break the single-day record for the number of downloads for a single piece of software.

Whereas Firefox growth to date has been slow and steady, it seems to me that the time may be right for a major surge in adoption.

Techcrunch posted an article stating “Gartner Says Vista Will Collapse. And That’s Why The Yahoo Deal Must Happen”.The last paragraph sums up the Gartner view:

The real question isn’t “What can Microsoft do to fix their Windows product?” but rather “Even If Windows and Office were perfect, would it be enough to keep Microsoft relevant in the medium term?” I think the answer to that latter question might be “nope.” And that, of course, is why they want Yahoo so badly. Online advertising revenue is their only real hope of long term survival.

This of course is a complete load of crap. Vista WAS handled poorly by Microsoft, but its not the collapse of Windows by any stretch of the imagination. The most laughable thing is that while so called “analysts” are predicting the demise of Windows,Vista alone (ie, not counting Windows server or XP) still has more market share than *nix and OS X COMBINED. The real reason Vista isn’t selling as well as MS hoped is because of Windows XP. XP has turned out to be a mature, stable, and secure OS. Vista has new plumbing and the kinks are still being worked out (to be expected). The underlying plumbing put into Vista however will position it for the long term, and XP will ultimately be phased out. Don’t count Vista, or Windows as a whole “out”.

The image below shows Windows market share versus the only other statistically relevant OS’s (ie, over 1% market share) as of March 2008.

It’s true that *nix based systems have made some inroads in business computing, however, Windows still controls 90% of the market. Linux doesn’t even show up on the list… it ranks at  0.61% (though OS X REALLY is a flavor of unix so you could count that in the *nix category) Ask any non-geek what OS they run and you’ll get two answers, Windows or OS X, but mostly just windows. The people predicting these things needs to step out of the basement and away from their Tux stuff animals for a bit and look at the real world. Could the apple cart be upset, absolutely, but it won’t happen over night and Microsoft will have time to react.