Google Steals (Search) Thunder From Yahoo! And Microsoft

The subject of the Web search wars is almost entirely spent. Google is el leadero supremo. No getting around that. It is what it is. The company’s been live and kickin’ for about a decade, and in that time, it’s shown all other market participants that it’s the biggest swinging you-know-what around. It’s proven itself year after year to be an unrelenting force, achieving goals most anyone wouldn’t have predicted that it’d lay claim to. One might even wonder whether Larry and Sergey could’ve boasted the resume it holds today as something even so much as attainable back in their pre-we-want-to-rule-the-world days. I very much doubt such ambitions were on the agenda.

All in all, Google’s done better throughout its tenure on the WWW than many, many people within and without the company’s Mountain View headquarters ever envisaged. But it’s not yet completed its journey. It’s not yet reached the top of the proverbial hill, despite the many analogies written of the Web giant to that effect. It’s merely the closest to the peak.

If the research firm ComScore’s documentation – presuming its accurate, of course - on the company’s history as recent as October 2007 is any indication, Google still seems to have quite a bit of energy left to push for even greater market share in the realm of search. Which, surely we don’t need to remind anyone, has been the company’s forte since it’s beginnings at a Stanford. (If one wishes to argue the point that its ad network has really been the main driver, one would do well to spend a moment consulting the chicken-and-the-egg metaphor.)

Yes, it’s true, according to the latest statistics published of the search industry and all its various players, Google is still moving along on an incline. Still. And what’s even more interesting is how it’s managing to glean growth out of an already massively saturated and massively exploited arena. At least the US arena, anyway.

Rather than grow itself further in new and untamed pastures, the company seems to have done its main competitors, Yahoo! and Microsoft, a great disservice, amassing an additional 1.5% share of the market from September to October by stealing a good bit of thunder from #2 and #3.

According to ComScore’s figures, Yahoo!’s hold on the market dropped 0.8%, going from 22.9% to 23.7%, while Microsoft saw 0.6% removed from its 10.3% share. As it stood in October, Microsoft held 9.7% of the Web search space.

This news mustn’t make Google’s main rivals all too happy, considering the efforts both have made to combat the Big G in the last several years. Finding one has lost ground following attempts to “close the gap”, as it were, must certainly put a furrow in one’s brow, for sure.

And, of course, seeing as how Google is naught but a fantastical and seemingly unstoppable freight train of power and might, all wrapped up in friendly colors that make millions and millions and millions of people all around the world feel fuzzy and warm all over, there’s really no reason to expect “the engine that very much could” to witness its trajectory lose steam any time soon.

Want to wager whether Yahoo! and Microsoft will chart similar losses come the close of December?

When do you imagine Google will reach the summit and finally start to show signs of exhaustion? Next month? Next year? The next decade? Post your comments below.