You may think Google (GOOG) dominates the search market, with 63.7 percent of all searches conducted in the United States compared with Yahoo's (YHOO) 20 percent. But you haven't been looking at mobile Internet devices, which everyone agrees will be the most dynamic and explosive piece of the online world for years to come. According to a new report from the Internet marketing firm Net Applications, Google accounts for 97.5 percent of all mobile phone searches. 97.5 percent. Now that's what we call dominance.
And the company's fortunes keep rising elsewhere as well. BusinessWeek spreads around a rumor that Dell (DELL) is exploring the option of using the Android operating system for a new line of cheap laptops. This makes Dell the second major computer manufacturer to flirt with abandoning Windows for Android; Hewlett-Packard announced it was looking into Android a few months back. Google has an outright monopoly on mobile search, and it's threatening to eat into Microsoft's (MSFT) core business. What does it do for an encore?
Ah, yes: Twitter. For months, gossipmongers like us have been spreading word that Google might snatch up the microblogging company for a few hundred million. After all, Twitter's main potential value lies in searching all those tweets in real time and the advertising that could accompany the search results. What business model does that sound like to you?
And Google's not alone in reportedly salivating over all that searchable data. Apple has reportedly offered $700 million to make Twitter a part of the Steve Jobs family. In fact, Twitter Vice President of Operations Santosh Jayaram (who just happens to be Google's former head of search quality) just announced a new breakthrough in searching tweets. Now, Twitter's search engine will also crawl over each tweet, find any links people embedded in them, scan the linked page, and index the content to produce even more accurate results. In addition, Twitter's search engine will also rank results according to whatever Internet or cultural trend is hot at the moment, as well as the popularity of each twitterer. Now everyone searching on Twitter gets to know what Ashton Kutcher thinks, whether they want to or not.
Sounds perfect for Google, right? They've got the search know-how, and Twitter's got the next big thing. Nonetheless, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone maintains that he won't sell the company—to Google or anyone else. In case anyone didn't get the message, he even went on The View to tell Barbara Walters. Got that, Eric Schmidt? Twitter's not for sale. Until it is, of course.
[the article was originally published at http://www.thebigmoney.com/blogs/feeling-lucky/2009/05/07/googles-latest-domination]
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