The latest US search engine figures are in and it appears Yahoo's deal with Mozilla has paid off. Yahoo's market share has reportedly quadrupled, but does this mean Google should be worried?
In IT Blogwatch, bloggers open DuckDuckGo.
Filling in for our humble blogwatcher Richi Jennings, is a humbler Stephen Glasskeys.
Gregg Keizer wheels and deals:
Mozilla's deal with Yahoo has quadrupled the search provider's usage by those running Firefox in the U.S., but the browser's users still prefer Google, according to data from an Irish analytics company. MORE
Despite being well known, occassionally Matt Kapko makes mistakes:
Despite [Google's] ascent to a household name brand, there are still many things [it] can't, hasn't or chooses not to pursue. Companies that follow Google with too much misplaced admiration run the risk of making large bets on unproven concepts.
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Take Google Glass, for example, an aspirational project that seems to be in perpetual beta after missing its original plans for consumer release this year. MORE
Matt Rosoff climbs down from Mt. Everest:
As one analyst put it recently, we've reached Peak Google.
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But from that peak, there's only one direction: down.
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Google is still overly dependent on a single source of revenue: search advertising. MORE
Ben Lovejoy sees storm clouds gathering:
Google's share of the US search market has fallen to its lowest level since [2008] following the deal in which Mozilla switched the default Firefox search engine from Google to Yahoo.
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The decline [shows] just how important it is to be the default search engine in a browser...Google is likely to be rather more worried about Yahoo's attempts to persuade Apple to switch. MORE
Brad Reed talks to a boot:
We've read in earlier reports that Apple is considering giving Google the boot from Safari on iOS and that both Microsoft and Yahoo are in talks with the company to replace Google with their own search engines.
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While dumping Google on Safari obviously wouldn't completely erode Google's lead...it would likely make an even greater impact than Mozilla's decision to dump Google. MORE
Leo Mirani checks default settings:
[Google's] dip in market share...shows how reliant the largest web companies are on the laziness of users. Researchers have shown...everyday users do not change the default settings on the software they use.
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Meanwhile, other big Silicon Valley firms are trying to change the behavior of more experienced users simply by changing the defaults. Google is said to have lost access to the location data of tens of millions of iPhone users after Apple booted Google Maps [off] iOS in favor of its own maps product. MORE
Oh Danny Sullivan the share, the share is falling: [You're fired - Ed.]
Yep, Google search share dropped to lowest since 09. Boon for company's "anyone can switch so don't regulate us" line MORE
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