Study Reveals How User Incentives and Search Engine Awareness Could Challenge Google’s Dominance

Even with the rise of AI and people using AI for search, Google is still dominating the search market even though it has recently faced an antitrust ruling too. A new study by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) analyzed which are the main reasons Google has such a big hold on search space. For the study, the researchers gathered 2,000 people and looked at their searching habits for two weeks. They also offered cash rewards to some participants by asking them to use Microsoft Bing while asking some to actively choose their search engine instead of sticking to a default one.

The results showed that participants who were paid to use Bing had positive reviews about it and some even continued using it after two weeks were finished. On the other hand, when users were asked to actively choose their search engine instead of some default one also increased Bing’s usage by 1.1%. The researchers said that if users have a clear understanding of the quality of each search engine and do not find it inconvenient to switch to other search engines, Microsoft Bing could have a 15% increase of market share than what it holds now.

This study was done because the court had decided how they wanted to address illegal tricks of Google in the search markets, with them proposing solutions like stopping Chrome from operating under Google, sharing its data with its rival companies for 10 years and ending default search deals with some companies. The study also suggests that policies should ask users to try alternative search engines like Bing to challenge Google.

Image: DIW-Aigen

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World