So what is going on in search markets around the globe?
Let’s take a look.
Russia. The Russian search market belongs to Yandex and Google; the engines which accounted for 96% of all search traffic in Russia in August. Yandex edges out Google at 54.4% of all searches (plus a 7.4% share contributed by Mail.ru which is powered by Yandex) vs only 34.5% for Google. Yandex also launched Yandex.kz, in Kazakhstan.
UK. The Office of Fair Trading (OFT), announced that market studies “which are aimed at clarifying and updating the understanding of consumer harm that arises from potentially misleading advertising and pricing” will be focusing on behavioral targeting and online pricing practices. Also, 53% of adults say they buy online – but UK businesses are not getting with the program (according to research conducted by Harris Interactive). Twitter Bing search is launched in the UK, to high accolades; Facebook accounts for nearly 15% of search share.
Germany The new German government issued a document intending to “protect online journalism” by allowing publishers to claim royalties for their content, forcing news aggregators and search engines like Google to pay in order to index and display results from news sites. In addition, German Chancellor Angela Merkel attacks Google books, saying Google can’t “just go around scanning books,” that the company is “just scanning books without any regard to copyright law,” and “the internet should not be exempt from copyright laws.” Also, YouTube is under fire – Hamburg’s prosecutor started a case against YouTube after allegations were made by German music rights holders, and the prosecutor has requested log files from the US to identify who uploaded or viewed 500 specific videos.
Belgium. The Belgian Defense department is investigating Google Earth to discover if it is a safety danger. The Belgian newspaper “de Zondag” reports that a group has been formed to look for a “structural and global solution for the danger that certain images on Google Earth can be for safety.”