Last week the Nielsen Net Ratings released its monthly data for Internet usage in April which showed Google crossing another significant milestone - of 50 percent market share. The advance has taken the search leader even further ahead of rivals Microsoft and Yahoo.
While millions of Internet users may not blink at the news, Google's rivals continue to fret at the stupendous success of this company. A closer look of the business world on the Web reveals that Microsoft and Yahoo aren't the only ones to resent the growth of Google. A large number of Internet service providers are equally frustrated at the way Google has been growing and creating a new environment for Internet content.
In a scenario where consumers pay nothing to get access to their queried subject, conventional service providers would find it hard to remain profitable. At each quarter, a growing number of services complain of declining sales and bottomlines. Their business models would simply prove ineffective in an environment where services that were once fee-based could become free for the consumer because the revenues now come from advertisers.
Its clutch of recent products also offers the same prospect - free usage for consumers and targeted links for advertisers: Google News, Google Earth, Google Calendar, etc.
It's no surprise that the stock is a favorite of investors. In barely two years since its initial public offering, Google's share price has grown more than 400 percent. Quarter after quarter, the company reported impressive financial performance making the stock value jump and traders rake in huge profits. Some months back, the company CEO warned shareholders that one couldn't expect Google to put in record growth every quarter. The announcement made share prices tumble a bit but the stock continues to be resilient. The company reported operating income at $2bn indicating a growth of 33 percent and revenues at a cool $6.1bn - up 92 percent from previous year.
Recently, it filed an infringement lawsuit against Microsoft claiming the software giant was trying to lure away users from Google search. In Vista, Microsoft's to-be-released operating system, users were being led to use Microsoft's own search engine. The court rejected Google's lawsuit saying the default setting on Microsoft's O/S posed no business threat to Google.
