Emergence of Global Search Engines: Trends in History and Competition

The web search market is an example of a two-sided market where internet users account for one side and the advertisers for the other. Given the increased regulatory scrutiny faced by the web search market, this paper uses the two-sided market framework to analyze the market structure and the behavioral trends on both sides of the market in order to assess the state of competition in this market. Section 2 traces the evolution of the web search engines. Section 3 presents the two-sided market framework and examines trends on both sides of the web search market. Section 4 concludes.