I got distracted during a debate on Google and their regulatory need to delete out-dated and irrelevant entries in their search index. How big is google in Europe?
I found the following sites/documents (using Google 😆 )
- Internet and Search Engine Usage By Country somewhere in the Pearson web space
- 2013 Search Engine Market Share By Country from returnonnow.com
While the former is dated 2010 and the later 2013, I have combined these sources to get the following graph. The countries are sorted by number of internet users.

In most cases the 2nd provider is Bing.
The countries included are driven by the returnonow list. (It has the EU’s largest countries by population, and I used the Pearson document to add some obvious omissions, including Portugal, Greece, Hungary & Romania. )
The spreadsheet with the data table is here…. It includes a number of other non-European countries.
Hi Dave,
Thanks for the mention, and I”m glad our data was useful for you. We are looking at an update to the data in the near future, so check back if you want to stay up on how Google’s share is progressing heading into 2015.
Cheers,
Tommy Landry, Return On Now
While looking at this again, the USA has a Google usage rate of 67% why is this so much lower than Europe. There are other obvious anomalies, such as China and Russia, where there are linguistic and political barriers to entry, but Hungary and Finland the most isolated languages in Europe conform to the norm, while the Czech Republic is Europe’s standout exception, with Seznam, a local company acting as the second place provider. An examination of the numbers suggests that language is a relevant factor but surely it can’t apply to the USA.
Why is the USA’s Google share so low? Is it the slow decline of Google’s predecessors, the Yahoo/Bing tie up and the historic footprint of AOL?
This map at vox.com shows the growth in popularity of Chrome and while this reflects the Samsung vs. Apple and the demise of Nokia, I think it’s part of the story.