Internet search is a lucrative business — just ask Google. The company accounts for two-thirds of desktop searches in the US. But change is afoot this year. Microsoft and Yahoo, numbers two and three in US search, could revisit their search agreement with each other. Yahoo’s market share in this field has risen (now 13 per cent, ComScore says) after it became the default for Mozilla Firefox. Meanwhile Google’s exclusive search deal with Apple’s Safari browser is up for grabs; UBS estimates that the Safari deal could drive nearly $8bn in sales for Google this year. So 2015 could become the year of the search wars.
網路搜尋是一項有利可圖的業務——只需問問谷歌(Google)就知道了。該公司佔美國桌上型電腦搜尋的三分之二。但今年，這樣領域正在醞釀一場變革。在美國搜尋領域排名第二的微軟(Microsoft)和排名第三的Yahoo(Yahoo)，可能會重新修訂互相之間的搜尋協議。在成爲Mozilla火狐(Firefox)瀏覽器的默認搜索引擎後，Yahoo在網路搜尋領域的市場份額已上升（ComScore稱，如今其份額爲13%）。與此同時，谷歌與蘋果(Apple)瀏覽器Safari的獨家搜尋協議仍懸而未決；瑞銀(UBS)估計，與Safari的協議今年可能會爲谷歌帶來近80億美元的銷售額。因此，2015年可能會成爲搜尋大戰之年。