The top 100 Webware sites have been announced, and Google’s name came up eleven times. From there, things began to resemble the search engine market: Yahoo was referenced on seven occasions, but Ask’s logo made just one appearance.
“There were more than 5,000 nominations for sites to be included in this awards program, which Webware’s editors pruned to a list of 250 finalists,” announces one Webware page. Those editors, by the way, are headed up by CNET’s Rafe Needleman. “Users then voted on those finalists,” and “there were 489,467 votes cast.”
So it would seem that Google is definitely a user favorite. The company’s domination was most visible in the “Mobile” category, where Google Gmail Mobile, Google Maps Mobile, and 1-800-GOOG-411 grabbed three of the ten available spots.
Yahoo, on the other hand, received just one of the “Mobile” awards. Given Yahoo’s recent focus on the mobile market, that’s rather embarrassing, but at least it was oneSearch, which has been getting so much of the company’s attention, that won a spot.
In the category of “Browsing” (“[t]ools for finding online info, and storing and sharing files”), things were more even – Google and Yahoo got one mention each, along with Windows Live Search, BitTorrent, ChaCha, and YouSendIt.
Yet Needleman notes one way in which things weren’t at all equal, writing, “Overall, 91 percent of all votes cast were for winning products. In many categories, there was a very steep drop-off between the top vote-getter and the No. 2 (and lesser) winners. In Browsing, for example, Firefox received 50 percent of all votes in the category, and the second-most-popular product, Opera, got only 13 percent.”
This revelation appears to tip the odds even further in Google’s favor. When the Webware awards are given again in 2008, we’ll have to see if the Mountain View-based giant has held onto its lead.
