3. Are consumers likely to search by brand or search by attribute when comparing search sites? Which process is likely to favor the specialized search sites? There’s a big marketing battle brewing among the search engines of the world. Google is so widely used that many consumers talk of “Googling” a product or service when they mean they’re going to do some Internet research. But as dominant as Google may be in some countries—it handles two out of every three online searches in the United States, for instance—it does face competition, both locally and globally. Still, because of Google’s firmly entrenched position, other search engines have to start by stirring consumers to recognize a problem with their current search engine.

The most aggressive of Google’s search competitors is bing, introduced by parent company Microsoft in 2009. Within months, bing had arranged to become the official search engine of Yahoo!, one of the web’s original search sites. Thanks to this deal, bing improved its share and now holds about 15 percent of the U.S.

search market, pulling nearly even with the market share of Yahoo! worldwide, however, bing holds only a tiny share of the search market, whereas Google still controls more than 80 percent of the global search market.