Thursday, February 11, 2010

Is Google getting worried about Microsoft and Yahoo

I was extremely surprised about Google's TV spot during the super bowl last Sunday not only because they have so far always avoided TV advertising for its search engine but also because I question the return on the $6 million investment (excluding production costs).

In my opinion it is a clear sign that Google is starting to become worried about Bing. Microsoft's market share in search increased from 8% to 11% following the large Bing TV advertising campaign in the summer of 2009. I personally do not believe that Google should have taken this step because given the wide market share and existing awareness for the brand, I do not believe that Google will see many new users as a result of the spot. In my opinion, the only way they could have reached that objective would have been to make the wide audience aware of the additional features that Google offers besides search. I assume that Google was mainly targeting potential users that just use the default search engine of their browser and by only presenting the search functionality, I think that the spot did very little to convince people to change.

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