Google’s market share has increased again. According to CNET, the search giant is up to 77.4% of the search ad market.
Yahoo!s share dropped by 2% to 17.8%. The Google-Yahoo! agreement that allows some of Google’s ads to be displayed on Yahoo! SERPs will give Google more than 90% of the search ad market. That has triggered some antitrust concerns with the Department of Justice and others.
Google has achieved the monolithic distinction of being among the companies that can’t wake up in the morning without crossing the line of evil business mogul. Microsoft crossed that line years ago. Now it’s Google’s turn, and from the looks of things, Yahoo! will never make it. We may soon see a search environment where Yahoo! is no longer a player and with Google dominating both the search and the search advertising industries it is possible that a forced breakup to protect consumers may be inevitable. But we’re a few years from that yet.
