Two things happened in 2018: First, GDPR, the European data protection law, came into effect in May 2018. Second, the EU fined Alphabet €4.34 billion for antitrust violations related to Android’s market dominance.
Both events didn’t directly decrease Google’s market share but set off a period of Google mistrust that gave space to smaller competitors like DuckDuckGo and Bing.
Europeans are much more privacy-sensitive, which means regulatory fines and privacy laws influence consumer behavior much more than the U.S.
For example, the European privacy search engine StartPage gets 56% of searches from the EU and 21% from the U.S.
Users visit Google less because of privacy concerns. France declared not to use Google as a default search engine for some ministries in November 2018.
Choice screens and public perception are the biggest drivers behind Google’s decline. Google sends less referral traffic to websites. So, what is the effect?
Who Wins What Google Loses?
Image Credit: Kevin Indig
The biggest winner of Google’s decline is Bing. The ever-second search engine is the biggest beneficiary of Google’s decline.
It’s very possible that ChatGPT and its close affiliation with Microsoft gave its search engine a bigger boost in Europe than originally assumed, but Bing is also the second choice in cons’ minds.
Now, these numbers are still peanuts, and search engines like DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, and QWANT license search results from Bing and Google. So, you could say that Google and Bing win, after all.
However, Ecosia and QWANT are working on a joint web index to become independent from other search engines.
How much longer until DuckDuckGo and others announce their own index as well? When the alpha gets weaker, the smaller animals smell the opportunity.
Despite the decline in market share, Google’s search revenue is still growing impressively fast at its scale. Why?
Market share doesn’t have to correlate with search volume or monetizable queries.
There are more mobile than desktop searches, and mobile searches drop to a smaller degree.
Google still dominates in other markets – the EU might not be enough to put a dent into Google’s revenue that the company couldn’t compensate.
Google has been more aggressive in search monetization than the drop in market share.
Relative ad revenue growth, which is predicted to fall below 50% next year, could be a better indicator than absolute growth.
I also want to point out a caveat in the data: StatCounter gathers data by measuring referral traffic on 1.5 million sites. There is a chance that Google sending out less traffic to websites and keeping it to themselves affects the numbers.
What Are The Implications?
Google’s dropping market share in the EU, combined with potential antitrust remedies (like a forced end to the distribution agreement with Apple) and more competition, will likely fragment Search further.
In other words, we might optimize for more search engines (again). Most of them might function similarly in ranking but might need site owners to take dedicated indexing actions, such as integrating with Bing’s IndexNOW.
We’ve already dusted off our Bing Webmaster Tools when it turned out ChatGPT is using Bing results for its search feature. What’s next? Perplexity webmaster tools? Boosted by growing market share, SEO professionals should pay more attention to Bing.
Other search engines don’t have webmaster tools yet – to my surprise. What better way to foster a relationship with site owners than a portal? But with increasingly independent indices, that could become a reality soon.
Ironically, the monopoly lawsuit against Google comes just as the company gets more competition. A 1% market share of a giant like Alphabet can create a unicorn with $1.75 billion in ARR.
Browsers play a critical role in the search engine wars. The DoJ is pushing for Chrome to divest from Google, and OpenAI is working on its own browser.
In my opinion, OpenAI should buy Arc. Either way, browsers are the ultimate internet user interface and offer more user information than search engines can chew.
I want to be clear that I don’t think Google is doomed to fail. Google has all the ingredients to come out on top in the “new AI world.” The only reason it will fail is by standing in its own way.
France is ditching Google to reclaim its online independence
OpenAI Considers Taking on Google With Browser
Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal