It seems clear to me that what Schmidt meant with the comment is that the industry is volatile enough that some commentators predict an upset. This is obviously to counter claims that Google is too big or too powerful, which is also obviously what the hearings are really about. That's not a "bald-faced lie."

Saying Schmidt lied to Congress is the bald-faced lie.

Has the search engine been volatile at all over the last five years? It seems to me to be extremely stable compared to other areas of the web. Eric Schmidt knows that Bing isn't going to be eclipsing Google any time soon, I think that's what the author was getting at.

I don't know what you consider volatile, but Bing launched in 2009 and now has over 30% marketshare. Yahoo also quit search. Other challengers keep popping up too (Wolfram Alpha, Blekko, Duck Duck Go, etc.).

Anyway, I found it clear that Schmidt wasn't saying that he thought Bing was going to beat Google. He said there are others who think that. You can call that misleading or slippery, but it's by definition not a bald-faced lie.

Yes, Bing has gained marketshare. But over that time period, Google has lost only 2 tenths of a share point. For Bing to pass Google, they would suddenly have to lose a minimum of a whopping 15 share points after a decade or so of share growth and two years of stable share.

As far as I'm aware, there is nothing to suggest that it is at all likely that Bing is going to start taking large amounts of share from Google after no record of having done so to date. Do you disagree?

On the other side, Bing needs to bring more advertisers to their adcenter, to get higher ppc prices for higher revenues. Google benefits from much more advertiser presence as a result of search market share. Or if advertisers open up their ads using robads standards, bing and other Google competitors would have a higher monetization; see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3022998 for rsobad

Wolfram Alpha isn't a search engine, and doesn't DDG use Yahoo/Bing's API for some things?

One major player going away, another losing something like 9 Billion, and one or two minor players stepping up isn't exactly a volatile industry.

30% marketshare? Source, please.

Most sources I follow -- and from colleagues that work at both Google and Bing -- Bing is operating in the mid to upper teens as a percentage of the market.

First result for "bing market share": http://www.businessinsider.com/bing-tops-30-in-us-2011-4

It's referring to Bing and Yahoo traffic, since Bing is the backend for Yahoo search now.

From the article:

"Since Microsoft entered the market, Google has nearly doubled its share at both companies' expense, but for the last year or so Bing has gained a few fractions of a point every month -- at least in the U.S.

Worldwide, Google still dominates with between 80% and 90% share, depending on who's measuring."

Not to pick on the result, but BusinessInsider is a poor choice as a reference. At least they point to results from Experian.

So what? 30% is 30%

Most of that 30%was bought. Organic growth is incredibly slow. Google has an incredible stringhold on this market and more so on the mobile.

If Bing:

(1) gets another 4% from Google over the next year due to IE defaults and advertising;

(2) gets another 2-4% from the FB deal;

(3) signs a deal with Apple to become default on iOS (2/3 of mobile = 5%+) and desktop Safari (4%+).

That could potentially put them around the same market share as Google. None of those propositions are crazy either.

It's a bit hard to call any statement of the form "X could happen" a lie unless there's some physical law preventing X from happening.

You're definitely right, and I don't agree with the author regarding the idea that Eric was outright lying. I just don't think the search engine market has been very volatile lately. As others noted, Bing's increasing market share comes largely from cannibalizing its partner's market share (Yahoo).

I just don't see Google in position to lose much more share to Bing is all.

Only if he mentioned duckduckgo!

Good testimony. The comments seem like a pretty smooth way for Google to:

-(As the writer identifies) try not to seem like a monopoly

-try to simultaneously reassure investors. It sounds like parody on purpose...nobody can take it seriously except an official record

-acknowledge that any tech is ripe for disruption, even in the face of giants. Google, especially, knows this.

edit:formatting (I'm a noob here!)

It's ironic how similar the commentary from Schmidt compared to Gates from the MS investigation. There are plenty of competitors, technology moves quickly, customers can switch...yada yada yada.

To this day, I find the chief outcome of the MS anti-trust trial is this: gov't now feels it has the discretion to investigate/disrupt/control any technology firm with decent market size.

Looks like Google is going to have to start innovating in the areas of lobbying and campaign contributions.

I am curious, how would you compute market share of Bing when Yahoo! uses Bing as its backend? Combined with Yahoo, Bing _powers_ 35% of the searches.

In my experience with a variety of sites, Google's market share is easily 80-85% (according to the stats for each of these sites). And I don't mean technical sites, for which it's rarely below 95%. Whether you consider Bing alone, or you consider Bing and Yahoo, I don't buy for a second that they have anything over 15-20% market share at the moment.

This is probably a more interesting metric, which is seeing the referrer lets you know how someone found your site. And Google consistently scores higher numbers here on my personal web site.

However, that statistic says more about ranking too, since sites higher in the ranking in Google's results will get more referrer hits, if the same site was lower ranked in Bing's index it would get fewer hits from Bing. In the ideal case one could compare the relative referrals from a site which falls in the same spot (preferably #1 for best sampling) on both indexes.

Good point. Where else do they provide the backend?

Baidu...soon -- at least for English searches.

Clicky's stats show Google at around 90% on desktop and 96% on mobile.

http://getclicky.com/user/#/marketshare/global/search-engine...

That URL gives you a login page. Direct link: http://getclicky.com/marketshare/global/search-engines/

The other article on CNN about this shows Schmidt taking oath. Could some of these statements, founded on inaccurate information, be considered perjurious?

There was nothing false about what he said. His statement was prefixed with "some commentators note...", which is absolutely true. Unfortunately, the word "commentator" has mistakenly been conflated with authority and accuracy in popular culture, even though a "bored Mashable reporter with a journalism degree and Excel" is technically a "commentator". Any sort of analysis, such as the questionable linear extrapolation used by the Mashable reporter, is also treated as authoritative and accurate and amplified through the echo chamber of the popular press. That failing is not Schmidt's, but our own.

For his part, Schmidt was doing what hired goons are hired to do -- mould the truth, but never to the point of (detectable) perjury. You can bet your life that there is an army of lawyers with sweaty brows in Mountain View poring over every possible response to every possible question.

No, I think it's expected that he's going to put the best possible face on everything. He won't get called on it unless he manages to actually harm someone, which is very unlikely since he's on the defensive here.

Edit: Note that he called her a commentator, not an expert :)

Just imagine if Microsoft gives a good boost ($$$) to Firefox to be the first search engine in the box?

I've lost a little respect for Schmidt with this news.