• by Masha Geller , June 5, 2003

Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google's advertisers gain broad exposure across Google's partner websites, including many of the largest websites in the world, such as Ask Jeeves, AT&T WorldNet and Earthlink. It's expanding rapidly in Europe and elsewhere, signing deals with online media companies to sell advertiser-sponsored search listings, and that expansion is far from over.

Yesterday, privately held Google signed a deal with Lycos Europe, which calls for Google to sell sponsored search results on Lycos Europe's homepage-building service Tripod in the UK and Germany later this month.

Earlier this week, AOL Canada Inc. and Google agreed to enhance search results pages on the AOL Canadian online service and AOL.ca with Google's sponsored links (Google's search technology has powered web search results for AOL since May 2002.)

Currently, the Google homepage can be set up in 88 languages, including Urdu, Latin and Klingon, and Google tallies 33% of global English Language searches, most of which can be accomplished in 0.5 seconds, which is how long it usually takes Google to search its database.

But that's not enough for the darling of the search field. The Lycos Europe deal includes offering Google search to the rest of Europe later this summer, the companies said.

According to comScore, the consumer search market is intensely competitive, with four major players dominating the vast majority of all search activity. Google sites control the largest share of searches conducted by global English-speaking Internet users, accounting for nearly one-third of all searches. Yahoo! is the domestic share leader, accounting for 26% of the 790 million average weekly U.S. searches.

Highlighting Google's success in attracting a loyal and active user base, comScore data also reveal that the typical Google user searched an average of nine times per week. And, while 54% of AOL visitors used AOL search functionality, those who did so searched an impressive average of nearly 8 times per week.