As of January 2025, online search engine Bing accounted for 12.23 percent of the global desktop search market, while market leader Google had a share of around 78.83 percent. Meanwhile, Yahoo's market share was 3.07 percent. Google in the global market Ever since the introduction of Google Search in 1997, the company has dominated the search engine market, while the shares of all other tools has been rather lopsided. The majority of Google revenues are generated through advertising. Its parent corporation, Alphabet, was one of the biggest internet companies worldwide as of 2023, with a market capitalization of 1,6 trillion U.S. dollars. The company has also expanded its services to mail, productivity tools, enterprise products, mobile devices, and other ventures. As a result, Google earned one of the highest tech company revenues in 2023 with roughly 305.6 billion U.S. dollars. Search engine usage in different countries Google is the most frequently used search engine worldwide. But in some countries, its’ alternatives are leading or competing with it to some extent. As of the last quarter of 2023, more than 63 percent of internet users in Russia used Yandex, whereas Google users were nearly 36 percent. Meanwhile, Baidu was the most used search engine in China, despite a strong percentage decrease of internet users in the country accessing it. In other countries, like Japan and Mexico, people tend to use Yahoo along with Google. In the first quarter of 2022 nearly 56 percent of the respondents in Japan said that they had used Yahoo in the past four weeks. In the same year, over 27 percent of users in Mexico said they used Yahoo. Another search engine, Bing, operated by Microsoft, was the second most popular search engine in the United Kingdom after Google.

Google is not only popular in its home country but is also the dominant internet search provider in many major online markets, frequently generating almost 80 percent of desktop search traffic. The search engine giant has a market share of over 90 percent in India and accounted for the majority of the global search engine market, ahead of other competitors such as Yahoo, Bing, Yandex, and Baidu. Google’s online dominance All roads lead to Rome, or if you are browsing the internet, all roads lead to Google. It is hard to imagine an online experience without the online behemoth, as the company offers a wide range of online products and services that all seamlessly integrate with each other. Google search and advertising are the core products of the company, accounting for the vast majority of the company revenues. When adding this up with the Chrome browser, Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, Google’s ownership of the Android mobile operating system, and various other consumer and enterprise services, Google is basically a one-stop shop for online needs. Google anti-trust rulings However, Google’s dominance of the search market is not always welcome and is keenly watched by authorities and industry watchdogs – since 2017, the EU commission has fined Google over 8 billion euros in antitrust fines for abusing its monopoly in online advertising. In March 2019, European Commission found that Google violated antitrust regulations by imposing contractual restrictions on third-party websites in order to make them less competitive and fined the company 1.7 billion euros.

In January 2025, Google remained by far the most popular search engine in the UK, holding a market share of 93.25 percent across all devices. That month, Bing had a market share of approximately 4.22 percent in second place, followed by Yahoo! with approximately 1.37 percent. The EU vs Google Despite Google’s dominance of the search engine market, maintaining its position at the top has not been a smooth ride. Google’s market share saw a decline in the summer of 2018, plummeting to an all-time-low in July. The search engine experienced a similar dip in June and July 2017. These two low points coincided with the European Commission’s antitrust charges against the company, both of which were unprecedented in the now decade-long duel between both parties. As skepticism towards search engine platforms grows in line with public concern regarding censorship and data privacy, alternative services like Duckduckgo offer users both information protection and unfiltered results. Despite this, it still held less than one percent of the industry’s market share as of June 2021. Perception of fake news in the UK According to a questionnaire conducted in the United Kingdom in 2018, 57.7 percent of respondents had come across inaccurate news on social media at least once before. Rising concerns over fake news, or information which has been manipulated to influence the public has been a hot topic in recent years. The younger generation however, remains skeptical with nearly half of Generation Z claiming to be either unconcerned about fake news, or believed that it did not exist altogether.  

Yandex was the leading search engine in Russia from October to December 2024, having accounted for roughly two-thirds of total user visits over that period. The second-most visited search engine in the country was Google, whose share of visits decreased slightly from the previous quarter. Yandex search usage in Russia Despite the global dominance of Google as a primary search engine, Russian consumers gave their preference to homegrown Yandex and Mail.ru. Furthermore, Yandex was the most popular search engine for news reading, as well as the second most visited online resource in the country, with nearly 64 million daily users. Besides the search engine, Yandex offered a wide range of online services, such as food delivery, maps, and a voice assistant. Mail.ru and Rambler search engines The third most visited search engine, Mail.ru, belonged to the VK Group, one of the most expensive internet companies operating in Russia, whose value was measured at 1.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2024. Rambler, launched in 1996, saw a decline in usage compared to the 2000s. It was a part of the Rambler Group, which consisted of several media organizations, including the online video service Okko and news services Lenta.ru and Rambler News Service. The corporation Sber acquired the group in 2020.

As of September 2023, Google led the search engine market in Singapore with a 95.1 percent share of the market. Bing and Yahoo! followed with minor market shares in the same year.

As of March 2025, Google continued to dominate the global search engine industry by far, with an 89.62 percent market share. However, this stronghold may be showing signs of erosion, with its share across all devices dipping to its lowest point in over two decades. Bing, Google's closest competitor, currently holds a market share of 4.01 percent across, while Russia-based Yandex hikes to the third place with a share of around 2.51 percent. Competitive landscape and regional variations While Google's overall dominance persists, other search engines carve out niches in various markets and platforms. Bing holds a 12.21 percent market share across desktop devices worldwide, as Yandex and Baidu have found success inside and outside of their home markets. Yandex is used by over 63 percent of Russian internet users, but Baidu has seen its market share significantly in China As regional variations highlight the importance of local players in challenging Google's global supremacy, the company is likely to face more challenges with the AI-powered online search trend and increasing regulatory scrutiny. Search behavior and antitrust concerns Despite facing more competition, Google remains deeply ingrained in users' online habits. In 2024, "Google" itself was the most popular search query on its own platform, followed by "YouTube" - another Google-owned property. This self-reinforcing ecosystem has drawn scrutiny from regulators, with the European Commission imposing millionaire antitrust fines on the company. As its influence extends beyond search into various online services, the company's market position continues to be a subject of debate among industry watchdogs and authorities worldwide.

In January 2025, Google accounted for 93.89 percent of the global mobile search engine market worldwide. Ever since the release of Google Search in 1997, the company's search engine has dominated the search engine market, maintaining a margin of more than 93 percentage points since January 2015. Currently owned by the parent corporation Alphabet Inc., Google has one of the highest tech company revenues, with roughly 305.63 billion U.S. dollars in 2023.

In June 2024, Google had a search engine market share of approximately 94.62 percent in Brazil across all devices. Microsoft's Bing ranked second, with a share of 3.84 percent, while other engines like Yahoo! and DuckDuckGo followed with smaller shares.

The transition from analog to digital archives and the recent explosion of online content offers researchers novel ways of engaging with data. The crucial question for ensuring a balance between the supply and demand-side of data, is whether this trend connects to existing scholarly practices and to the average search skills of researchers. To gain insight into this process a survey was conducted among nearly three hundred (N= 288) humanities scholars in the Netherlands and Belgium with the aim of finding answers to the following questions: 1) To what extent are digital databases and archives used? 2) What are the preferences in search functionalities 3) Are there differences in search strategies between novices and experts of information retrieval? Our results show that while scholars actively engage in research online they mainly search for text and images. General search systems such as Google and JSTOR are predominant, while large-scale collections such as Europeana are rarely consulted. Searching with keywords is the dominant search strategy and advanced search options are rarely used. When comparing novice and more experienced searchers, the first tend to have a more narrow selection of search engines, and mostly use keywords. Our overall findings indicate that Google is the key player among available search engines. This dominant use illustrates the paradoxical attitude of scholars toward Google: while transparency of provenance and selection are deemed key academic requirements, the workings of the Google algorithm remain unclear. We conclude that Google introduces a black box into digital scholarly practices, indicating scholars will become increasingly dependent on such black boxed algorithms. This calls for a reconsideration of the academic principles of provenance and context.

In March 2024, Google accounted for over 95 percent of the mobile search market in the United States. With approximately 59 percent reach among mobile audiences, Google Search is also one of the most popular mobile apps in the United States. DuckDuckGo and Yahoo! followed as the leading mobile search providers in the United States during the last examined month, with shares of around 1.84 percent and 1.54 percent each.

In January 2024, Microsoft Sites handled 28.3 percent of all search queries in the United States. During the same period, Verizon Media (formerly known as Yahoo and Oath) had a search market share of little less than 11 percent. Market leader Google generated 60.4 percent of all core search queries in the United States.

Google's dominance in Poland's search engine market is striking, with a 95.7 percent share in August 2024. The disparity between Google and its rivals highlights the challenges alternative search engines face in gaining traction in the Polish market. Google's reach across devices Google's supremacy extends across both desktop and mobile platforms in Poland. On desktop computers, Google commanded an 86.41 percent share in March 2024, while its dominance was even more pronounced on mobile devices, reaching an impressive 98.49 percent. This consistent leadership across platforms demonstrates Google's ability to cater to users' search needs regardless of their device. Impact on advertising and e-commerce The search engine giant's influence extends beyond user preferences, significantly impacting Poland's digital advertising landscape. In 2023, search engine marketing accounted for 31.2 percent of the online advertising market in the country. This substantial share reflects the importance of search engines in reaching consumers. Additionally, Google's search results play a crucial role in e-commerce visibility, with popular marketplace Allegro topping the rankings on Google's search engine by reaching over 2.6 million phrases in January 2024.

In January 2025, Google's mobile search market share in the United Kingdom was 97.55 percent. Despite the search engine remaining with a similar referral share for mobile devices throughout the years, Google's quota on desktop devices in the UK has significantly reduced during the latest analyzed month.

In March 2024, Google was the most popular search engine in the UK, holding a market share of 93.61 percent across all devices. Bing had a relatively large market share of approximately 3.94 percent in second place, followed by Yahoo! with approximately 1.35 percent.

In January 2024, Bing held a 4.13 percent share of the search market in the United Kingdom (UK) across all devices. Meanwhile, Google held a much larger share of the UK's online search market.

Bing on the world stage  Google holds a similar share of the global desktop search market as it does in the UK. Outside of the UK, Bing attracts an increasing 10.51 percent share of the market. Worldwide, Bing regularly attracts more than 1.3 billion unique monthly visitors.

Google and mobile: an unfair advantage?  Bing held just a 1.4 percent of the mobile search market in the UK in June 2021. Despite being significantly lower than their overall share, this was still good enough to give Bing second place in the market, due to Google’s absolute dominance of mobile search in the UK. According to European regulators, however, the means with which Google achieved their dominance is neither fair nor legal.

In 2019, Google was fined 1.5 billion euros for effectively forcing manufacturers of android-based equipment to bundle Chrome and Google search with their devices, in order to access other Google services. As a result of that ruling, users setting up android devices in Europe from the start of 2020 will be able to choose from a list of available default search providers. The available options of the list will vary country to country, based on a bidding process in which rival search engines indicate to Google exactly how much they would be willing to pay per user selecting their company as the default search provider.

As of January 2025, the Russian search engine Yandex had a global market share of 2.62 percent. Despite registering some of its highest worldwide reach and an increasing uptake, this is not a significant share compared to the dominance of Google. However, in Russia itself, Yandex has a much greater share of the search engine market.

In January 2025, the privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo had a global market share of 0.68 percent. This is not a lot compared to the dominant market leader Google. However, DuckDuckGo has a slightly higher share of the search engine market in the United States, the company's home market.

In January 2025, the South Korean search engine Naver had a global market share of 0.33 percent. This is not a lot compared to the dominant market leader Google. However, Naver has the largest share of the search engine market in its home market South Korea.

In January 2025, the Chinese search engine Baidu had a global market share of 0.73 percent. This is not a lot compared to the dominant market leader Google. However, in China, Baidu has a much greater share of the search engine market.

In 2021, approximately three-quarters of consumers in Germany, France, the United States, and the United Kingdom (UK) stated they used Google when looking for local business information, making it the most commonly used and by far the most dominant search engine for this purpose. There were, however, many other search engine platforms frequently used by consumers including Apple Maps, Yahoo, Tripadvisor, as well as other content-specific websites and apps.