Late last year, the computer industry had a rude awakening when Google, everyone’s favorite search engine, was pushed off the top place of the most popular website on the planet. According to Cloudflare Radar’s popularity list, an unexpected (relative) newcomer has knocked the tech giant down to the second most popular site. No, despite Microsoft’s devious strategy of making Bing the default search tool for the Edge browser (fun fact: the most popular search term typed into Bing is “Google”), it was unable to defeat Google and its ever-expanding suite of services, which includes Maps, Translate, Photos, Flights, Books, and News.
According to a lawyer for Google’s parent company, Alphabet, “Google” is the most searched phrase on Bing “by far.” According to Bloomberg, Google made the case in attempting to have the EU reverse its $5 billion antitrust penalties, citing the figure as proof that consumers use Google by choice rather than by coercion. The European Commission has imposed a punishment on Google, claiming that it has misused its position as the creator of Android. According to the regulator, Google will no longer be able to force device manufacturers to pre-install Chrome and Google search if they wish to use Android. What is Google’s argument? That the majority of people would just utilize its search engine.
According to data gathered by SEO firm Ahrefs, “google” is the most frequently searched phrase on Bing throughout the world. It’s followed by “youtube,” “facebook,” “gmail,” and “amazon,” but it has a lead of about 5 million searches over the runner-up. Facebook is the most popular social media platform in the United States, followed by Google and Apple. At first sight, it appears that consumers are accessing Google’s search engine via Microsoft’s. But wait a second. According to Ahrefs data, “bing homepage quiz” is the fifth most searched phrase on Bing in the United States, while “bing” ranks seventh. The name of the search engine is the ninth most-searched phrase on the internet. What exactly is going on here?
On February 17, 2021, the popular video-sharing app TikTok briefly held the top place, albeit only for a day. However, it began claiming a few more days in March and a few more days in May after that. On most days after August 10, the site was the most frequented domain. In terms of traffic, the website has eclipsed Facebook as the most popular social networking platform on the Internet, yet Facebook still has the most subscribers globally.
TikTok’s domination, however, did not endure long. According to new data from Cloudfare over the previous 30 days, Google is once again the most visited website on the planet. In other news, Twitter and WhatsApp have both dropped out of the top 10 rankings, with Instagram and Mozilla replacing them. Pornographic names were removed from the statistics, despite other domain trackers included adult websites in their top ten.
