We’ve balked at France’s attempts to shortcut Google in the past, down right made fun of them for it. But the latest search share numbers in the Land of Baguettes and Snarls (gimme a break, had to get at least one in there) show that Google is near to surpassing the 90 percent threshold.
Remember the railings against “omnigooglization” in Europe, heavily peppered with anti-Anglo sentiments? Remember how we laughed? Silly Frenchmen, we said.
Remember also the inept attempt to develop a Francophilic Google competitor?
Well, from a competition standpoint, we may owe them a heartfelt Je suis désolé. That doesn’t mean “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” wasn’t funny, only that we may not have foreseen a Microsoft-reminiscent dominance approaching.
French metrics company XitiMonitor released it’s “search engine barometer” to show that Google’s share of the market in July reached 89.79 percent, leaving about 3 percent for Yahoo, 2.5 percent for MSN, and nearly two percent each for a pair of search engines you may have never heard of: Orange and Free.
And don’t bother asking about Ask.com. Nobody in Frogland is.
Google’s dominance isn’t really a recent phenomenon there, either. Over the past year, Google’s share has risen by just four points, not the forty or so you might expect if you follow US numbers.
Yahoo declined by 1.5 points over the same period, and is close to being overtaken by MSN, which managed a 7.7 percent increase.
“After Google and its ‘close’ competitors, it suffices to say that there remains little place for other search engines: from the 5th place (Free), the visit share is lower than 1 point, and from the 10th (Ask), it descends under the 0.1 point threshold,” reads the release at XiTiMonitor.
And for all the cheap shots above, Je fais des excuses, mes amis francais; aucun sang, aucun mal.
