New York – Google (NASD: GOOG) increased
its share of the U.S.
search market by 2% during the month of April, and now claims 71% of the total
market, according to a report from Hitwise.
Meanwhile, Yahoo (NASD: YHOO) lost 1% of the
search market in March, and now counts 14.66%, and Microsoft’s (NASD: MSFT) Bing lost 2%,
and sits at 9.43%.
IAC’s (NASD: IACI) Ask.com posted a 37% decline in April, and now
represents 2.18% of U.S.
search market share.
Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/w15nc
I made Yahoo my start page way, way back, in 1995, when it was just a white background with a list of hyperlinks organized by subject. And I stuck with it for the next 15 years. As Yahoo evolved, I liked it more and more — the news headlines, the interesting stories at the top etc., and the search seemed as good as any other.
But then, sometime early in 2010, I noticed something odd. I’d launch my browser, check out the Yahoo headlines and then type in the URL of the next page I wanted to go to. But instead of taking me there, Yahoo would take me to a new Yahoo search page.
I have no idea if this was intentional on Yahoo’s part, or some peculiarity of my web browser, Mozilla, or just a glitch or something, but it happened on all my computers and (I just checked) still happens today.
If intentional, this seems like a major decision by Yahoo, to deactivate the user’s ability to go to a new URL from Yahoo.com. But I have yet to read anything about it.
Regardless, it’s irritating and insulting, and it doesn’t happen when I start with Google. So after 15 years with Yahoo, Google became my start page a few months back.