Yahoo, Overture, Inktomi…here are three names that might change the search engine market.
To cut a long story short, four years ago Yahoo search capabilities were powered by a new-comer, Google. But Yahoo was unhappy to share the earnings with Google, so someone of the top management decided that is time to go alone in the
search engine business.
So, the first step was to sign a partnership with Overture, a firm believer of the power of advertisement in the search results and then, one year later, Yahoo buys Inktomi for $235 million.
With these two partners, Yahoo decided to finally buy Overture for $1.63 billion.
So finally in February 2004, Yahoo Search was on the Internet. One year later in February, according to comScore Networks, U.S. Internet users went to Yahoo! with 31 percent of their search queries, while Google got 36 percent. Some analysts are convinced that the percents are close to equal.
MSN is way behind the two giants with a market share of 16%. In the same time, with features like Gmail, Google Fusion and so on, Google is trying to enter the portal market.
So, the question is: will Google win the portal war or Yahoo will be able to put an end to Google's supremacy in the search business? Nobody knows, but if you ask us, we would bet our money on Google.
