Google is a verb...

Microsoft is a noun. Yahoo! is an expression. AOL is outdated. And MySpace and Facebook are the current big boys in social media.

But back to my first couple of statements. I find it interesting that Google is so popular and has very few detractors, while Microsoft is also popular but has so many detractors.

Stepping back into history, it was America On Line that popularized the internet by giving away their software and free trials. They evolved into AOL and joined forces with Time/Warner/CNN and these days are a minor player.

Bill Gates and his buds should be credited for developing software that was relatively easy to use compared to the programs that we had to use before Windows. Microsoft also launched MSN in 1995 which included the free email service, HotMail. Meanwhile Yahoo! incorporated in 1995 and also provided free email accounts, just for signing up.

(By the way, if you don't have a free email address, get one. G-mail from Google is my favorite, but both Yahoo! and MSN Hotmail are also free and this way if you ever change jobs or internet service providers, you can always have the same email address using one of these free services.)

Microsoft received bad press for their bundling of software, and has been in court multiple times on anti-trust lawsuits. And there are people that simply want alternatives to the Big Dog.

Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft all have diversified services and yet the fact that "Google" is a verb shows that they have been able to stay clean and not confuse the public as to what Google is all about. We can't say the same about the other companies I've mentioned.

Google's popularity continues to grow because they have stayed true to their core business, that is the internet search engine. The other companies, never quite took hold in the same manner and they are suffering either financially, or public relations wise as a result.

Take a look at these numbers from MarketingCharts.com (click on the charts to make them bigger):

Google at All-Time High of 67% of US Searches

Google accounted for 67.25% of all US searches in the four weeks ended March 29, 2008 - the highest proportion of searches it has ever achieved, and up some 5% from a year earlier, when it accounted for 64.13% of searches, according to Hitwise.

Yahoo Search, MSN Search and Ask.com received, respectively, 20.29%, 5.25% and 4.09% of US searches in March. The remaining 46 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool together accounted for 1.72% of US searches.

Ask.com was up 18% year-over-year, though down from the previous month. Yahoo and MSN were both down month-over-month as well as year-over-year.

Search Traffic to Key Industries

Search engines remain the primary way for internet users to navigate to various key industry categories.

From March ‘07 to March ‘08, the Travel, Entertainment, Business and Finance and Sports categories increased by double digits their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.

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