14 DAY TRIAL // Sundar Pichai is one of the tech executives that attended the antitrust hearing with the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee last week, and his opening statement included several remarks regarding the position of Google’s search engine in the current market.
While many believe that Google is by far the number one search engine out there without any rival in this side of the business, Pichai says that there are plenty of rivals that compete against Google for online searches.
And no, Pichai doesn’t specifically refer to Microsoft, whose Bing search engine is often considered the only service that may stand a chance against Google given the investments the software giant has made lately.
Antitrust problems
Google’s CEO points to online retailers as competitors in the search market, explaining that this is the place where the online shopping happens, and the top queries are performed.
“When searching for products online, you may be visiting Amazon, eBay, Walmart, or any one of a number of e-commerce providers, where most online shopping queries happen,” Pichai said according to Bloomberg. “Similarly, in areas like travel and real estate, Google faces strong competition for search queries from many businesses that are experts in these areas.”
“People have more ways to search for information than ever before -- and increasingly this is happening outside the context of only a search engine,” Pichai said. “You can ask Alexa a question from your kitchen; read your news on Twitter; ask friends for information via WhatsApp; and get recommendations on Snapchat or Pinterest.”
No less than 85 percent of the searches performed in the United States belong to Google, and this shows just how big the company has become in this business. However, Google will likely have to deal with one of the biggest legal struggles rather sooner than later, as the Justice Department wants to file legal action against the company for anticompetitive behavior.
According to data provided by StatCounter, Google accounts for over 92% of the online searches in the entire world, while Microsoft’s Bing is far behind with just 2.78%.