The end of an era? Google Search’s dominance might be fading

Google Search has dominated the online search engine space for over a decade. For the first time, Google’s global market share has plummeted below 90%.

According to Statcounter’s latest numbers, Google Search currently has a worldwide market share of 89.71%. The last time Google’s market share dropped below 90% was in early 2015. On desktop, Google’s global share has dropped even more significantly to 79.1%. In Europe, the company’s search engine occupies 77.78% of the market.

According to Hanna Bozakov, Head of Marketing and Press Officer at email service provider Tuta, this trend shows that users are more skeptical of what search engine they use.

“Some might now say a 1% decline that’s nothing. But if you break it down to actual numbers of users, this shift is dramatic,” she says in a company blog post.

Bozakov estimates that this means that 50 million people have decided not to use Google Search anymore, which is a significant number. This only marks the beginning of Google’s downfall, she thinks.

“The data from recent months also suggests that this is not a one-time anomaly. It could very well be the beginning of a larger shift in user behavior as more and more people are increasingly concerned over privacy, monopolistic control, and data exploitation,” Bozakov explains.

She argues that more people leaving Google Search is a good thing for a “better, free, and diversified internet.”

“We expect that this is only the beginning and that more and more people will wake up and understand that the dominance of Big Tech is a problem and that it can only be solved by choosing alternative services,” Tuta’s Press Officer states.

Google Search’s dominance in the search engine market makes this difficult. For example, Tuta’s privacy-first alternative to Gmail has virtually disappeared from Google Search. Tuta isn’t the only company that has felt the wrath of Google’s monopolistic behavior. Other privacy-focused services, independent developers, and startups have reported similar issues with Google Search in the past.

“That’s why we at Tuta welcome the fact that Google’s monopoly on search might finally come to an end,” Bozakov writes.

She also refers to US Federal District Judge Amit Metha’s ruling that Google acted as a monopolist by abusing its dominant position in the search engine market. By paying companies like Apple and Mozilla for placing Google Search as the default search engine in their web browsers, Google harms competition and unfairly protects its market dominance.

Bozakov encourages people to turn to alternative, privacy-first search services and to say ‘no’ to Google and its intrusive tracking.

Despite Google Search’s reduction, the tech conglomerate is still way ahead of the competition. In second place, we find Microsoft’s search engine Bing, with a measly 4.01% market share. Competitors like Yandex, Yahoo!, and Chinese search engine Baidu are even smaller, with a market share of 2.51% or less.