Google’s share of US search market at lowest level since 2008 as Mozilla/Yahoo partnership bites

Google’s share of the US search market has fallen to its lowest level since at least 2008 following the deal in which Mozilla switched the default Firefox search engine from Google to Yahoo in November. Yahoo saw its share increase from 8.6% to 10.4% in the one month since the deal was signed.

The figure was revealed by StatCounter, who said that Firefox users represented just over 12% of US Internet users as of last month … 

Founding editor of Search Engine Land Danny Sullivan told Bloomberg that Google is unlikely to be panicking too much at a reduction in share from 77.3% to 75.2%.

I doubt Google needs to worry. For one, that’s probably the high water mark. Unless Firefox suddenly grows share, everyone who likely could get switched has been now. And Google might claw back even the small share gone.

The decline does, however, show just how important it is to be the default search engine in a browser – and Google is likely to be rather more worried about Yahoo’s attempts to persuade Apple to switch. Currently Siri voice searches uses Microsoft’s Bing, while Safari defaults to Google.