Google-opoloy the search engine monopoly?

Google is one of the most common internet search engines known and used today. In fact, it's become the Microsoft of search engines and rules around the same 85% or so of the general search engine market now as Microsoft does with the desktop operation system market. As with Mac OS and a couple of Linux varieties owning a smaller piece of their market, so does MSN/Yahoo/Bing in owning a similar percentage of the general search engine market with the remainder holding just a small fraction of the rest.

There are numerous search engines listed in Wikipedia, so whatever happened with the others? Many of these have been, and are still, useful, but are apparently being overshadowed by their competition.

So what does this mean to your company? As with any monopoly or oligopoly, Google can drive the search engine market now that it's on the top of the list and can therefore have an affect on your budget. Many companies invest a lot of time and effort into their advertising efforts and this includes their digital marketing efforts. Search engine marketing (SEM) is among those efforts and includes such things as search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC).

Search engines crawl through company websites so a search engine company with a hold on the market can dictate how it wants to catalog what it finds in the website so if it doesn't like what it sees, it doesn't have to even list it in searches. That means companies need to work on their SEO to conform their website to whatever will get their site listed. Search engine companies can even change how and what they catalog at any point with no notice therefore requiring website owners to periodically check for search engine updates and make any necessary updates to their website to conform to the new requirements.

In addition to these SEO concerns, there's also PPC. Instead of charging end consumers for their search services, some search engine companies such as Google charge other companies a fee to have their advertisements posted with search results as well as all over the internet on sponsoring websites. Google does this through their Adwords and Adsense programs. These programs have helped make them a monster corporation. They have such a reign on this type of advertising with their searches that they don't have to approve your ads and can even ban your company and/or website from posting ads there if they want. That means you could lose a huge amount of advertising potential in the internet-based search market just because one company doesn't want you to advertise there.

Now it appears they're moving more into other markets similar to how Microsoft went from just an operation system to an office suite and more. So where does their product line end?

What would happen if Google were hit by a massive attack and taken down for a period of hours or even days? With companies being so dependent on using them for searches, where would they go? How would it affect business productivity if companies don't know how to look up information if Google isn't there? Would they know what other search engines are available or which to use?

Publish Press, an Enterprise Effect company, provides marketing services for small businesses.