For the month of December, Google (GOOG) reached its highest share of search in the United States, accounting for 65.98 percent of all searched in the country. For the entire year they averaged 64 percent of search share in the U.S.
Yahoo (YHOO) remained in second place again, receiving 20.88 percent of search share; Microsoft (MSFT) had 7.04 percent share; and Ask.com (IACI) was fourth with 4.14 percent share for searches in the U.S.
The report from Hitwise, and cited by MarketingCharts, added that from December 2006 to December 2007, the strongest growth for search was in Sports, Entertainment, Travel, Business and Finance. All of them enjoyed double-digit search growth.
All of this sounds good for the oveall industry, but for Google, they're walking a fine line. The perception that they're becoming big brother on the Internet, along with their search success, is a difficult road to walk for them. Their very success if part of what is creating the "big brother" perception among users.
It's odd how people love a company when it's growing and going up in the world, but then when it reaches a certain level, which Google seems now to have reached, people and the media start to turn against them based on that success, and look for things to burst their bubble.
Google has to be careful going forward, for no other reason than they are successful. People loved to see their ascent, and now a lot of them will be happy to see their descent as well.
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