Google Will Continue To Dominate Search Market In 2008, Analysts SayGoogle Will Continue To Dominate Search Market In 2008, Analysts Say

Google entered 2008 pretty much as it entered 2007, with a dominating lead over its search engine competitors -- except in one country.

While analysts and search engine market share compilers differ on Google's 2008 outlook, they all agree that the search engine leader will remain far ahead of the search engine pack. However, Google hasn't been able to do much more than dent the South Korean search market, where Naver dominates the market by a higher percentage than Google dominates in the United States.

In the United States., Hitwise puts Google's market share at 65.1% while ComScore places its at 58.4%. In the search figures for November -- the latest currently available -- Yahoo is ranked second with nearly 22% and Microsoft is third. Hitwise lists Microsoft searches as garnering 7.09% of the market while ComScore places the software giant's search market share at 9.8%.

In Korea, however, Google was recently ranked at less than 2% of the market while homegrown search engine Naver has more than 75%. Another Korean company, Daum.net, is ranked second with about 10% market share, according to recent figures.

One analyst, Standard & Poor's Scott Kessler, believes Google's expanding drive into a variety of new lines of work could slow down its gains in the search market, according to a report in The New York Times. Another analyst, Jordan Rohan of RBC Capital Markets, believes Google will continue forging ahead in the search competition. "It is an arms race that they've won by a landslide," Rohan told the newspaper.