Yahoo vs. Google vs. MSN vs. AOL vs. Ask.com

According to Net Applications, the August 2008 global market share of internet search engines was as follows:

1. Google (79%)
   
2. Yahoo (12%)
   
3. MSN (5%; incl. Live Search)
   
4. AOL (2%)
   
5. Ask.com (1%)
   

I used Google Insights for Search to investigate their global Google-popularity:



It turned out that Yahoo was more popular than Google at least as far as people searching for something relating to these portals was concerned. I would guess that this may have something to do with the extra directory feature of Yahoo. In fact, MSN is about as searched for as Google. Note that Google is the only one to display a sudden sharp increase (mid-2005). It then surpassed MSN about mid-2006. Of course, I live in the US so I get a different impression than people in other countries. So I ran the trend analysis on a few individual countries. First, I took on the US:



Yahoo was more clearly in the lead and Google didn't show that sudden jump as much. MSN was weak and stayed that way. How about Germany?



Google jumped in the lead in mid-2005 and stayed ahead. How were things in France?



Contrary to its European neighbor Germany, France had Yahoo and even MSN ahead of Google. Now I turned to Asia: Japan.



Yahoo was totally in charge. Sure, Google bypassed MSN by the beginning of 2006 but was still way behind. AOL was insignificant. Finally, what about Brazil?



MSN managed barely to stay ahead of Yahoo and Google.