Abstract:

The economics of search engines has an increasing importance as the internet spreads across the globe. Search engines refer to a worldwide audience that constantly increases, while their industry is expanding over telecommunications networks. Various stylised facts demonstrate the challenge posed by search engines in the internet economy. 60% of people seeking health-related information consult a search engine ; on average, Americans spend 17 minutes a day on Google ; 40% of online advertising revenue is directed towards search engines ; Google captures 95% of European requests to search engines (75% in the USA); knowledge workers spend 15-25% of their time on non-productive information related activities and 40% of them cannot find the information they need on the Intranet (Feldman and Sherman 2003). These statistics show that enhancing information storage, search and retrieval could improve productivity by enabling workers to spend more time dealing with information instead of searching it. Most of the firms understood it and bought solutions to help people to find, use and share critical business information quickly.  Therefore, as van Hoboken (2008) described, the search engines consist a bottleneck in the online search process. In a digital economy which is increasingly becoming an information and attention-based economy, search engines are occupying a central role shaped by the symbolic status of Google both in terms of its renown and its dominance of internet traffic. Although most of available figures show the domestic penetration of the internet and Search engines and not the usage of search-engines-supported business solutions, they are a first indication about the actual tendencies.