Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) continued to lead the pack in web search throughout April, as web searches in the U.S. increased by 3% from the same month in 2008. Of all U.S. web searches in April, 64% happened on Google websites, while Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) raked up just over 20% and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) just over 8%.The question will be raised yet again -- can Yahoo! or Microsoft compete with Google in web search? Yahoo!'s 20.4 share is nothing to sneeze at, but when the top spot has over three times that share, there are strategies to consider. As in, is it worth competing?
For Microsoft, the game was over a long time ago but the company continues throwing resources at web search. It will never, ever catch up -- even to second place. That is, unless it buys Yahoo! once and for all.
Google's total core searches in the U.S. totaled 9.5 billion in April, along with Yahoo!'s 3 billion and Microsoft's rather paltry 1.2 billion.
Social networking sites posted decent search numbers as well, with MySpace seeing 658 million search queries (a 15% increase) and Facebook seeing 176 search queries (a 28% drop). Although MySpace isn't in the media news like it used to be (Facebook has the media darling title now), it's garnering the lion's share of search in the social networking arena.
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