Today, there are nine countries where Google has yet to tip the 90% market share threshold and it may not be the countries that you expect. China with Baidu and Russia with Yandex, are the ones that usually trip off people’s tongues when asked. Hardly surprising given the stats. Thanks to the Great Firewall in China Google has seen its hold on the search engine market crash from over 95% in 2009 to less than 3% this year – a spectacular fall from grace. And it would seem that Google has now given up the fight here, letting Baidu run the show. Meanwhile Yandex is getting ever closer to taking a 50% market share in Russia – it’s only a matter of time (Update on 2/4/15: Yandex got in touch to share some different stats for Russia).

It’s interesting that this is in stark contrast to the other two BRIC nations – India and Brazil where Google still enjoys around 95% market share.

But which are the other countries standing in the way of Google’s world domination? They are South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and the Czech Republic and now interestingly the UK, Canada and the US – not exactly small fry markets. While admittedly in the case of the last three, Google obviously does still dominate the market, there are suggestions that it may be losing market share as the likes of Yahoo and Bing continue to up their game.

A search engine market where Bing and Yahoo did hold more weight is a shift that would be considered a welcome change by many in the industry, including our own head of media, Sam Fenton Elstone, who says: “I’d like to encourage people to look beyond Google, as I believe that developing a more competitive search landscape will be better for consumers, brands and agencies alike. As with any industry, when you have such a dominant force, innovation is stifled and pricing becomes controlled and uncompetitive. And while Google does do a great job at trying to combat this and in reality provides a very good searching service, there is nothing to say that a more competitive market wouldn’t lead to an even better one.”