In the empire of Google in terms of online advertising the sun does not set. AdSense (web and video advertising platform), AdMob (for applications), search ads competing so that when a user enters certain words, the result X comes out, ads increasingly present in YouTube videos, agreements with Facebook to resell their own spaces -with a certain smell of lack of competition- … And so, we could continue for dozens of lines.
80% of Alphabet's revenues last year came from advertising , with a total of 147,000 million dollars. It has always been said that Google is, after all, the largest advertising agency in the world. But the difference in this agency is that it has the methods to contract that advertising and also the channels and supports in which it will appear. It is a business, literally, round.
The enormous hegemony of Google both in the use of search engines and browsers means that it is that network of permanence that makes it so strong. So much so that since last year it was announced its intention to abandon the use -at least as aggressive- of cookies in tracking users. Wait: “Google eliminating the elements that make its advertising capable of following us on the internet like a giant stone ball to Indiana Jones?”.
Yes, because it can. Google presented as a replacement a new system based on cohort analysis that is sustained precisely because it has almost absolute control of searches like in the browser. At the moment, the change is on stand-by by raising doubts about compliance with the GDPR in Europe, but if it did, Google would leave its competitors out of the game . Without cookies, only Google and Facebook, due to their deployment, is able to continue distributing advertising consistently.
However, these last few months have also seen the growth of possible present and future rivals of Facebook. Amazon's business is becoming more and more powerful also in advertising; Apple, although it has mainly affected Facebook , is also shielding itself in a line that does not help in this regard and, above all, a multitude of alternatives are beginning to emerge that will depend on providing a good product to change the user of the comfort that Google in a way supposes as a well-known place that it is.
It is a review of some of those alternatives.
Search engines: Duck Duck Go is no longer alone in the new batch
First, a bit of context. The following table shows the market share of search engines worldwide, Europe and Spain, where the predominance of Google is even more overwhelming.
Search engine WorldwideUnited StatesEuropeSpain Google 92.07% 88.24% 93.82% 96.58% Bing 2.44% 6.45% 2.44% 2.07% Yahoo! 1.62% 3.61% 0.86 % 0.8% Baidu 1.49% 0.03% No data No data Yandex 0.54% 0 .04% 1.71% 0.03% Sogou 0.43% No data No data No data DuckDuckGO 0, 5% 1.33% 0.38% 0.25% Ecosia 0.13% 0.12% 0.33% 0 , 22% Qwant 0.02% No data 0.08% No data MSN 0 .02% 0.06% 0.02% 0.01% Source: Statcounter As we can see, except for local exceptions such as Yandex in Russia or Baidu in China, Google has no competitor.
The only one with more popularity that in practice has been able to tickle its monopoly in searches is DuckDuckGo , the search engine focused on privacy.
With its commitment not to track our searches, DDG has seen its use grow from around 8 million daily searches in 2015 to more than 100 million today. An exponential growth that, however, only gives them the equivalent of the searches that Google receives in just 10 minutes.
Paying to search the internet without being tracked and shown advertising? DDG has managed to get closer to Bing in some markets, and it certainly seems the closest option to a modern search engine that can stand up to Google for its commitment to privacy .
But he's not the only one. Brave, the browser also focused on privacy created by former Mozilla executive Brendan Eich , already has its own search engine released in Beta phase.
What differentiates it from Google? And from DDG? Brave Search takes a long time in development and has taken important steps in incorporating technology. Last March, Brave acquired Tailcat, an open search engine with roots in Cliqz. By having its own search index, the platform does not track users or collect their information to create profiles.
Despite this it depends on some characteristics of the search engine they still depend on external services. Such is the case of image search, for example, which is based on Microsoft Bing , but the company clarifies that such information is not recorded either. In principle, the Brave Search beta does not include ads. However, in the future the service will offer two versions, one paid and the other free.
Added to this is Neeva , founded by former Google, and who proposes the idea that we pay to search. Yes, it sounds very crazy, but ultimately it all depends on what we value our data.
Behind this idea are Sridhar Ramaswamy, former head of Google's ad department, and Udi Manber, who captained the search system at Google for several years and also worked on Amazon's recommendation algorithm. As we see, two heavy weights.
Neeva users will pay between $ 5-10 per month to get the search results they want and not what advertisers want them to see . Or, at least, that's their catchphrase. The challenge, obviously, is to get people to pay for something that they are used to getting for free.
“Sometimes I joke with people: Listen, we all pay for the water that comes out of our tap. And they don't care. Because, you know what? It's a low-cost, high-quality product. Why online services don't they work the same? “, said Ramaswamy in an interview with Forbes.
Browsers: the competition also increases after years without rival
As for browsers, it happens three-quarters of the same. After a few golden years in which Chrome has found no rival and has swallowed whales like Mozilla Firefox, which in a decade has gone from 30% of the market to just 7%, now rivals are beginning to emerge.
Brave and Edge, both based on Chromium, yes, they are right now their biggest rivals, although Google's browser still sees them very far in the rearview mirror.
With its commitment to privacy and embracing the crypto world and decentralization in a way, Brave already has 36 million users worldwide, with a still miniscule market share. Edge, whom Microsoft increasingly includes more functionalities and with which they seem to have hit the key after many years of hardships with Internet Explorer, already has 8% of users, according to StatCounter, more than Firefox.
Credit: Microsoft Of course, with Edge, Microsoft seems to be returning to its own devices by making it increasingly difficult to uninstall and not use in Windows, just as it did with IE.
Safari continues with its 20%, remaining quite stable , but still very far from the 65% of Chrome's market share, which, however, has lost two points in the last year.
There are also even more innovative options, such as The Browser Company, formed by former Tesla, Instagram or Medium and that promise to rebuild the browser to avoid saturation of open tabs. Change its architecture as such; Although at the moment little is clear about his proposal.
In short, after a decade of lethargy, it seems that the search engine market is beginning to move as well.
Google is very much Google : his tactics to stay on top
Google has used various techniques in this time to maintain its dominant position, such as implementing Google as the default search engine in Chrome (and making it become the most used browser), paying Apple to include Google in Safari , or the bidding system that Brussels requested to curb its monopoly in mobile and which has ended up turning into an auction in which it comes out winning.
But, it would be little honest to say that if the Google search engine is there in the first place it is also because it works better than the others, even if it is at the cost of part of our privacy. The question, which we will see in the long term, is whether some of these options really manage to position themselves, whether they are paid or not.
