According to those in the know, Google's growth is continuing just fine, with the search engine chosen for 64 per cent of all searches in the US in the four weeks to 31st March this year. Yahoo, MSN and Ask loitered behind with 22,9 and three percent each, according to this release from Hitwise. This time last year, Google was at a little over 58 per cent. That's fairly impressive stuff.
Of course, the other engines are not taking this lying down, least of all Ask.com, which decided to sign off on a fairly boneheaded viral marketing stunt that put pain in campaign.
Luckily, it's not all PR. It looks as if Ask will be dropping its old algorithm and picking up on a new social search one at some point fairly soon, one which, apparently, works  well.
This is great news if the idea of having a number of strong competitors in a market is something you like. Will it tilt that three per cent dramatically towards 64 per cent, though? Most likely not immediately. Google's original launch was a bit of an oddity; all search engines before then had been much of a muchness, and everyone seemed to have their favourites. Google's algorithm stood out head and shoulders above the others, which is why people started using it. Another reason may have been the clean interface, but let's leave that aside for now.
The problem any new search tool has at the moment in garnering publicity and punters is assuring those punters that their search is significantly better than the others. Ask's new algorithm (which the company has at least admitted is in development) would need to be very, very good indeed to get people to switch to it in the same way that grassroots popularity gave Google it's original edge.
There's one other thing that may or may not be influential, of course. Google is in the search bar of every browser you download. Of course other engines are offered, but non technical users tend to just stick with the default setting. It's led to some very odd things indeed - not least a significant number of novice PC users putting web addresses into the search bar, and not the address bar. I'd not believe if I didn't see it at least once a week in the letters mailbox of the magazine I work for. If Google is seen as the norm, as the default infrastructure, then firms like Ask, Yahoo and the rest - all good engines - will have a much bigger fight than they expect.