Can Google and Linux Topple Microsoft

 

The story had a certain flair. In early March, the chief information officer of the Federal Aviation Administration , David Bowen, was reportedly considering forsaking Microsoft Windows and Office in favor of the Linux operating system and the Web-based Google Apps Premium office suite.

Could this be true? Might an office suite upstart topple the giant of giants? Does a Web-based suite of applications have enough punch to do the job?

Perhaps. Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Apps Premium does offer a strong set of collaborative word-processing and spreadsheet tools, in addition to e-mail and calendar capabilities. "We built the [applications] from the ground up to focus on collaboration," said Mike Bradshaw, who leads Google's federal enterprise division. "They're providing a new type of functionality to the space that people have been looking for."More>>

Google continues gaining search engine market share

Google continued gaining in U.S. search engine market share in April, up 1.4 percent over the prior month while Yahoo! held its second place position with 26.8 percent of U.S. searches, followed by Microsoft Sites (10.3 percent), Ask Network (5.1 percent) and Time Warner Network (5.0 percent).

According to the latest comScore Search analysis of activity across competitive search engines, Google now commands 49.7 percent of the Web in the United States, up 1.4 percent over the prior month when Google was reported to have 48.3 percent.  Yahoo!, while maintaining the No. 2 spot, was reported to have slipped slightly to Google's advantage, down 0.7 percent in U.S. search engine market share in April with Microsoft down 0.6 percent for the No. 3 spot.  While Yahoo's loss wasn't that negligable, Microsoft's market share was, representing a 3 percent decline, month-over-month.

Of interest was the fact that Americans conducted 7.3 billion searches online in April, virtually unchanged when compared to the prior month, but up 11 percent over the same period last year.

Google Sites led the pack with 3.6 billion search queries performed, followed by Yahoo Sites (2.0 billion), Microsoft Sites (757 million), Ask Network (376 million), and Time Warner Network (364 million).