Google's Search Share Shrinking

Lance Whitney reports:

Looking at the overall search engine market from May 2010 to May 2011, Compete found that Google has lost close to 16 percent of its share, dropping to 63.6 percent from 73.9 percent. At the same time, Microsoft grew its share by 75 percent, jumping to 17 percent from 9.7 percent.

The other three search engines tracked—Yahoo, Ask, and AOL—grew only slighty over the past year, showing that most of Bing's gain has been at the expense of Google.

Not surprising. After Google unceremoniously (and for reasons Google refused to confirm or verify) terminated OFB's advertising account and walked off with unpaid ad revenues they owed us, I decided to switch to Bing. Much to my surprise, it turns out Bing has some nifty bells and whistles I've come to really like.

What is really notable, though, is that Google is the only major search engine to lose market share year over year. Inexplicably, also-rans Ask.com and AOL made small gains. Something is afoot.