The internet began its life as a private computer network for military operations. It didn’t go public until the late 1980s. Over the last 30 years, it has been developed into a global network space that, at least from a legal standpoint, nobody owns. But from a practical standpoint, Google owns the internet. The evidence is all around us.
We can look at statistics and easily determine that Google is the world’s number one search engine. Then we can look at all of the internet properties they own in addition to their search engine, properties like YouTube and Blogger. They even own a fair number of the major web development tools used by developers to create websites.
If that’s not enough evidence, here is the final piece that puts the case to rest: the whole online world knows how important it is to keep Google happy – even website owners with absolutely no web development or SEO experience.
Blogging About SEO
BenefitMall is a Dallas company you have probably never heard unless you are somehow involved in the employee benefits space. Insurance brokers across the country are familiar with the company because they rely on BenefitMall as a general agency for a vast menu of services that help them do their jobs.
It turns out that BenefitMall, a company that is in no way attached to web development or SEO, recently published a blog post explaining to brokers how they can get the most from their agency websites. The post is all about SEO. There is nary a mention of anything outside the domain of making a website as SEO productive as possible.
The fact that the post was published is evidence that the company knows full well how important Google is. After all, Google is the main driving force behind all things SEO. Web developers seek to make Google happy first. If they can make the rest of the search engines happy along the way, that is a bonus.
Google This, Google That
If you step away from the BenefitMall piece and just do a general search on SEO practices, you will find post after post offering the latest tips and tricks. The one thing they all have in common is their Google-centric focus. It is always Google this or Google that.
This is no coincidence. The latest data ranks Google #1 with a market share in excess of 92%. Microsoft Bing owns a 2.83% market share. The remaining three of the top five are Yahoo, Baidu, and Yandex. You could be forgiven for not even knowing these three sites exist. Hardly anyone uses them compared to Google.
The statistics say it all. If Google commands more than 90% of the market, it doesn’t make sense for SEO developers to concentrate their efforts on satisfying any other search engine. And just for the record, most of the other search engines mimic what Google does. Some of the lesser-known search engines do not even run independent searches. They simply aggregate results from Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
Everybody Knows It
The final evidence demonstrating that Google owns the internet is as simple as the fact that everybody knows it. We are all familiar with Google’s dominance in everything from search and free email to cloud services and office suites. If you are someone who actively seeks to use Google as little as possible, you are in the minority.
And by the way, Google owns the Android mobile operating system. That means they own mobile, too. We just thought you’d like to know as you contemplate how active Google is in your daily life.