Google Has Worldwide Stronghold in Search Arena

According to AdAge.com: Microsoft and Yahoo's newly forged search deal is about breaking Google's dominance, which is pretty overwhelming in the U.S. by any measure: queries, clicks or ad revenue. But as hard as it will be to dislodge Google in the U.S., it will be even harder overseas.

Google has a 60% share of search queries in the U.S., but that number is 67% worldwide, according to ComScore. In many top and growing internet countries, including Germany, Canada, Brazil, Turkey and Italy, Google has more than 80% of the search market. Conversely, Microsoft has made few inroads abroad, and has 3% or less share in the U.K., Germany and Korea. Yahoo has one pocket of overseas influence: Japan, where its search share is 43%, close to Google's.

Google's dominance in Europe will likely be a strong part of its case when Microsoft and Yahoo seek the blessing of competition officials in Brussels for the deal. How are the search wars playing out abroad? Very well for Google, as the above international data from ComScore show. One caveat: The data do not include China, where Baidu is dominant and Google is frequently blocked by government censors.

Google Remains the Most Searched Website On The Internet For Now

Google is still the No.1 website in the world when it comes to website traffic for the month of June according to Compete.com. Yet, one has to wonder how long Google can maintain the No.1 spot in light of the recent marriage of Microsoft and Yahoo.

Google which posted nearly 146 million unique visits, and ranked No. 1 in June in the Compete 250, the company’s monthly ranking of the top 250 websites. Yahoo! was second with 142 million visits and social network, Facebook came in third with 122 million unique visits.
Compete.com's survey underscores the fact that search, entertainment and social networking continue to be the biggest traffic drivers on the Internet.

Microsoft’s Bing.com, the web’s newest search engine, saw its traffic skyrocket in June with nearly 50 million visits. It was only the first full month of activity for Bing, as it made good use of an eye-popping, $100 million advertising campaign.

The Google-Yahoo-Bing competition should be fun to watch, and the competition is heating up just as the search engine business is softening a bit. According to Compete, the overall search market declined by 1.7%, and Google lost 0.9% of its query volume. Meanwhile, Bing (and its predecessor, Live.com) served up 19 million more queries than it did in May.

Another Microsoft product, MSN, was fourth at 114 million. Then there was a big drop off to YouTube at No. 5 (78 million), Ebay sixth (73 million), Amazon.com seventh (65 million), Wikipedia eighth (62 million), MySpace ninth (60 million) and Microsoft.com No. 10 (55 million).

Bing’s performance wasn’t the only interesting story. AT&T and Apple both saw surges in traffic after the iPhone 3G S was officially unveiled on June 6th. Consumers flocked to the sites for the latest information on one of the summer’s most eagerly awaited smartphone releases. AT&T’s site traffic grew 8.2 percent and Apple saw a 19.1 percent increase over May traffic numbers. Both sites made Compete’s top 50.

Pew Internet Report: No Digital Divide On Mobile Web?

African-Americans and Hispanics are leading the way on the mobile web according to a new survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. According to the Pew Report:

• 56% of adult Americans have accessed the internet by wireless means, such as using a laptop, mobile device, game console, or MP3 player.



• The most prevalent way people get online using a wireless network is with a laptop computer; 39% of adults have done this.



• One-third of Americans (32%) have used a cell phone or Smartphone to access the internet for emailing, instant-messaging, or information-seeking. This level of mobile internet is up by one-third since December 2007, when 24% of Americans had ever used the internet on a mobile device. On the typical day, nearly one-fifth (19%) of Americans use the internet on a mobile device, up substantially from the 11% level recorded in December 2007. That’s a growth of 73% in the 16 month interval between surveys.



• African Americans are the most active users of the mobile internet – and their use of it is also growing the fastest. This means the digital divide between African Americans and white Americans diminishes when mobile use is taken into account.



• 48% of Africans Americans have at one time used their mobile device to access the internet for information, emailing, or instant-messaging, half again the national average of 32%.
  29% of African Americans use the internet on their handheld on an average day, also about half again the national average of 19%.



• Compared with 2007, when 12% of African Americans used the internet on their mobile on the average day, use of the mobile internet is up by 141%.



• The high level of activity among African Americans on mobile devices helps offset lower levels of access tools that have been traditional onramps to the internet, namely desktop computers, laptops, and home broadband connections.



• By a 59% to 45% margin, white Americans are more likely to go online using a computer on a typical day than African Americans.



• When mobile devices are included in the mix, the gap is cut in half; 61% of whites go online on the average day when mobile access is included while 54% of African Americans do.



• Looking across a range of digital activities – some done online typically using a computer and others being non-voice data activities on a mobile device – African American and white Americans, on average, do the same number of activities.

Tech Crunch: Ning losing U.S. Marketshare, Gets $15 Million From LightSpeed Venture Partners

Tech Crunch is reporting that do-it-yourself social network Ning despite losing market share in the U.S. social media space added another $15 million to its social media war chest from LightSpeed Venture Partners. To date, Ning has raised $119 million in social media capital. Its other investors include Allen & Co., Legg Mason, chairman and co-founder Marc Andreessen, and Reid Hoffman. Ning allows anyone to create their own social network customized to their particular interest or social group. Earlier this year, Ning passed the one million social network mark (it is now up to 1.3 million). In the U.S., unique visitors actually declined 10 percent from May, 2009 to June, 2009, according to comScore. Ning had 5.1 million visitors in the U.S. in June (its worldwide audience is about three times as large). The company attributes the decline to “some downtime in June as we expand and optimize our infrastructure to support the growth that we are expecting in the next 12 months.” Ning says it is adding 4,000 new Ning Networks every day and one million registered users every 15 days.

Amazon's Big Score: Inks Deal To Acquire Zappos.com For $850 Million

E-commerce giant Amazon.com is set to acquire e-retailer Zappos.com in a deal worth $850 million. Under the agreement, Amazon will obtain all outstanding shares, options and warrants of the Zappos in exchange for approximately 10 million shares of Amazon common stock along with $40 mil in cash and restricted stocks for Zappos employees. In a statement, Zappos CEO Tony Hseih said the deal went through because "there is a huge opportunity to utilize each [company's] strengths and move even faster towards our vision of delivering happiness to customers, employees and vendors."

MediaJobsDaily.com: The Bureau of Labor and Statistics Says There Are 2.6 Million Jobs in America!?

According to Rachel Kaufman of MediaJobsDaily.com there are a plethora of jobs available, but unfortunately they're not the jobs that people want (or are qualified for). The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Job Openings and Turnover Survey for May 2009 identifies 2.6 million job openings. Most of the openings were in retail, education, and health, with only 17,000 openings in "arts, entertainment, and recreation." There were 520,000 openings in "professional and business services," which sounds encouraging until you remember exactly how many jobs fit under that category (managers/administrators, accountants, lawyers, scientists, IT professionals, etc.)

Michael Jackson Humanitarian

Michael Jackson Humanitarian
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So much has been said about Michael Jackson; however, what I haven't seen a lot of coverage on was Michael Jackson's philanthropy and charity work. Well, here's a look at another side of Michael. Hollywood 411 looks at Michael Jackson the philanthropist. He supported 39 charities and is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most charitable star, supporting causes such as AIDS, world hunger and children's issues.