More Heated Google Search Competition Coming (GOOG, MSFT, YHOO)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published

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The search pact between Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) has been approved.  Finally.  The companies announced that the search pact was okayed by the Department of Justice and the European Commission.  The deal was announced last summer.  While few expect Yahoo! to reclaim its former glory, this is going to offer a more competition to Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG).

Last week we saw data from Hitwise showing that Bing was still growing in search market share and that Google’s share of US search was down to 71.49% in January from 72.25% in December.   Data from comScore put Google’s share of US search at 66% in December.

Yahoo! is going to be freed up now to go focus more on innovative search and on content.  This approval now puts Microsoft back in the majors for search.  Microsoft and Yahoo! probably just got a big step for the future of the Chinese internet because of Google’s actions of January with the threat to leave China.

Where the fight for Internet search gets interesting is that Google is spreading its tentacles in what may be too many directions.  Google is going into phones, GPS, electricity trading, space contests, social media link hyperactivity, extreme speed web access, and on and on….

We have expected that Microsoft and Yahoo! would get this approved.  If Google is ever going to be challenged in its core search business, that opportunity is now.

JON C. OGG

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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