• StraightUpSearch, Thursday, January 24, 2008 1:15 PM

So Google's stock tumbled by 160 points this week, after Nielsen's latest search share report showed that the giant's chokehold on the market loosened from 57% to 56% in December. Yikes! The sky is falling! Team Google must be too focused on building an online/offline marketing dashboard, growing YouTube and saving the planet from global warming--and they're forgetting about the core search property, right? Not quite.

Andrew at OneUpWeb posted Nielsen search share data for the past six months and found that Google's chokehold actually grew tighter in the long run, as the giant gained 3% of market share from July to December 2007. In contrast, MSN and Ask each grew by less than 1% in that time--while AOL slipped further into search nonexistence by losing half a percentage point. The biggest loser was Yahoo search, which lost market share by about 2.5%.

He makes the case that while Wall Street may be feeling a bit antsy about Google (not to mention every other tech stock, or stock in general--given the recession), the fact that the giant continues to increase overall share is the bigger story. Google is sustaining its place as the dominant search provider--which means that advertisers will continue to pump dollars into the AdWords coffers, and shareholders can continue to reap the rewards.

Andrew also notes that Yahoo's downward trend is more disheartening (not that the Street hasn't noticed), and wonders if the Web giant will ultimately go the way of AltaVista when it comes to search.

Read the whole story at StraightUpSearch »