As of October 2025, Google represented ***** percent of the global online search engine referrals on desktop devices. Despite being much ahead of its competitors, this represents a modest increase from the previous months. Meanwhile, its longtime competitor Bing accounted for ***** percent, as tools like Yahoo and Yandex held shares of over **** percent and **** percent respectively. Google and the global search 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 2024, with a market capitalization of **** 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 2024 with roughly ****** 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 ** percent of internet users in Russia used Yandex, whereas Google users represented little over ** percent. Meanwhile, Baidu was the most used search engine in China, despite a strong decrease in the percentage of internet users in the country accessing it. In other countries, like Japan and Mexico, people tend to use Yahoo along with Google. By the end of 2024, nearly half of the respondents in Japan said that they had used Yahoo in the past four weeks. In the same year, over ** percent of users in Mexico said they used Yahoo.

In 2024, search engine Daum accounted for **** percent of search engine usage in South Korea. Daum had been losing ground during the last few years and placed far behind the leading search engines on the Korean market, Google and Naver.

As of December 2025, Google continued to dominate the global search engine industry by far, with an 90.82 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 4.03 percent, while Russia-based Yandex hikes to the third place with a share of around 1.57 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 September 2025, the Google Chrome browser was the leader in the mobile internet browser market, with a share of 70.98 percent. As the runner-up, Apple’s Safari had a market share of around 19.52 percent. Other contenders in the field include Samsung Internet and Opera. Browser market Around half of the world’s population uses the internet regularly, and web browsers serve as the channel through which users from across the globe access the internet each day. As in the mobile browser market, Chrome is also the dominant figure in the overall web browser market. In December 2024, Chrome for Android and Chrome occupied the top two spots in the global web browser market. Chrome’s dominance is the most prominent in the desktop browser market: in 2024, Google’s popular browser accounted for nearly 67 percent of the market, miles ahead of its competitors. Google Chrome Released in 2008 by Google, Chrome has become one of the tech giant's most successful products over the years, together with their search engine Google Search, mobile operating system Android, e-mail service Gmail, etc. The success of Chrome has led to the expansion of the brand name into the company's other products such as Chrome OS, Chromecast, and Chromebook.

In 2024, Google's ad revenue amounted to 264.59 billion U.S. dollars. The company generates advertising revenue through its Google Ads platform, which enables advertisers to display ads, product listings and service offerings across Google’s extensive ad network (properties, partner sites, and apps) to web users. Google advertising Advertising accounts for the majority of Google’s revenue, which amounted to a total of 305.63 billion U.S. dollars in 2023. The majority of Google's advertising revenue comes from search advertising. Google market share These revenue figures come as no surprise, as Google accounts for the majority of the online and mobile search market worldwide. As of September 2023, Google was responsible for more than 84 percent of global desktop search traffic. The company holds a market share of more than 80 percent in a wide range of digital markets, having little to no domestic competition in many of them. China, Russia, and to a certain extent, Japan, are some of the few notable exceptions, where local products are more preferred.

As of January 12, 2026, Alphabet was the biggest internet company worldwide with a market cap of **** trillion U.S. dollars. Second-ranked Amazon had a market capitalization of **** billion U.S. dollars. The end of the 1990s in the United States saw the rise of a great number of internet companies, also called online companies or a variety of the name “dot com,” where the “.com” domain is derived from the word "commercial." At the time, such startups were merely riding the wave of early internet business but had little capital and perhaps one good idea. Few companies have survived the burst of the dot-com bubble, and even fewer have managed to become internationally successful. A few notable exceptions are American companies such as Google (founded in 1998), Amazon (founded in 1994) or eBay Inc. (founded in 1995), and the Chinese online giant Alibaba (founded in 1998), which have come to be some of the largest internet companies in the world. One of the largest internet companies worldwide is currently Alphabet, the parent company of Google. Having started as a PhD project at Stanford University, the Google project slowly gained traction and is now the number one search engine in the world, with a market share of ** percent on the search engine market. Due to a number of high-profile acquisitions, Google has expanded its portfolio beyond search to include the video content sharing site YouTube, the digital app platform Google Play Store, the webmail service Gmail, and the web browser Google Chrome, to name a few. In October 2015, Google reorganized itself into a newly created parent company, the multinational conglomerate Alphabet Inc. The biggest internet companies in terms of their workforce are currently Amazon, Alphabet, and Alibaba.

The number of internet users in Romania has increased yearly since 2017. By January 2023, the number of internet users stood at nearly ** million, marking an increase of over *** million from the previous year.      Internet Browsing in Romania  Internet usage varied across Romania’s regions; Bucharest-Ilfov had the highest share of users at **** percent, while South-Muntenia had the lowest at **** percent. Google dominated the search engine landscape in October 2023, capturing a substantial **** percent market share, with Bing and Yandex following at *** and *** percent, respectively.Notably, youtube.com claimed the top spot as the most visited website in August 2023, amassing over *** million total visits, closely trailed by google.com with *** million visits. Social media giant Facebook and adult entertainment site Pornhub both garnered over ** million visits that month. In the realm of applications, the TikTok app experienced a peak in popularity in February 2023, with ******* downloads. However, the record was set in August 2022 at ******* app downloads.         Online Video Games  Online gaming preferences in 2022 in Romania revealed puzzle games as the most popular type, followed by ** percent of respondents favoring strategy games. The gaming community in the country expanded to *** million players in 2023, with projections anticipating a rise to *** million by 2027. While most internet users engaged in gaming on smartphones and computers, ** percent also embraced game consoles, PlayStation being the most popular.