Mobile Revolution: Google Dominates Mobile Search…For Now

According to Google, which underwent an antitrust investigation by the Federal Trade Commission recently, the speed of change in the tech industry makes it impossible for regulators to impose restrictions without holding up the progress of future innovations. And the commission agreed, dropping all charges against the search giant.

“Exhibit A is the mobile device,” explains The New York Times. “Nowhere has technology changed as rapidly and consumer behavior as broadly. As people abandon desktop computers for mobile ones, existing tech companies’ business models are being upended and new companies are blooming.”

And it just so happens that Google is even more dominant on mobile phones than on the desktop — it has a staggering 96 percent of the world’s mobile search market.

“But, analysts say, as people change their search habits on mobile devices — bypassing Google to go straight to apps like Yelp’s, for example — that dominance could wane, or a competitor could swoop in and knock Google off its perch,” suggests the article.

And as voice recognition software and related technologies are implemented in the coming months and years, these figures are likely to shift and change further.

“Mobile is very much a moving target,” said Herbert Hovenkamp, a professor of antitrust law at the University of Iowa. “This is a market in which new competitors come in a week’s time.”

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