Google’s dominance challenged by local search sites
While the western world may view Google as the dominant force in the search market - ahead of its rivals Yahoo! and Microsoft - in other parts of the world Google is still struggling to make an impact, it has been reported.
In both searches launched and advertising, Google loses out to Naver in South Korea - only snatching up two per cent of all search queries in the country, according to NewsWeek.
And it’s a similar story for the vast internet population of China, with Google only attracting 17 per cent of searches - far behind its share inn western countries, such as the 82 per cent of queries undertaken by Google in Germany.
Competitor search engine sites could feasibly be a threat to the success of Google, according to the NewsWeek article since it has happened before to the likes of AltaVista.
In addition, the report suggests "it wouldn’t take a smash-hit new search engine to steal Google’s thunder; the damage could take the form of a slow leak of searchers to a variety of engines that each have some special appeal".
