A Competitor’s Guide to the Internet, Part II

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Back in February, I wrote a post that broke out some of the categories in which Google, Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft were competing. Since that time, all four companies have launched — or are in the middle of launching — significant new initiatives.

Advertising, of course, plays a big role in each of these products. According to eMarketer’s projections, advertisers are expected to spend $15.6 billion in online advertising in 2006. That’s an increase of about 50 percent over 2005, when the entire online ad market was worth about $10 billion.

BASELINE DATA

Google:

“2005 Revenue: $6.14 billion (up 92.4% from 2004)2005 Unique Visitors: 94.6 million per month averaging 32.3 minutes on sites“

Yahoo:

“2005 Revenue: $5.26 billion (up 47.1% from 2004)2005 Unique Visitors: 120 million per month averaging 244.9 minutes on sites“

Microsoft:

“2005 Revenue: $39.79 billion (up 8% from 2004)2005 Unique Visitors: 110.4 million unique visitors averaging 176 minutes on sites“

AOL:

“2005 Revenue (Time Warner)2005 Unique Visitors: ???“

SEARCH — In April Google gained in search market share for the ninth consecutive month, according to ComScore.

: powered by Google. Google is making huge investments in infrastructure in order to raise the barrier to entry in this market.

: powered by Yahoo

: MSN Search powered by MSN

: AOL Search “enhanced by Google”

Wildcards: MySpace is the second-most visited site in the world, slightly behind Yahoo. MySpace search is currently powered by Yahoo, but the company is planning to partner with a new search provider so its users don’t go to Google to search. MySpace is the single largest provider of traffic to Google.

TELEVISION — the entire advertising market for television was worth $55.4 billion in 2005.

: nothing yet — but Google was apparently hiring for Google TV back in September, and they’re currently looking for people with television experience. Google’s research lab presented a paper about interactive television applications at the Euro Interactive Television conference last week. Google has said it has no interest in creating original content.

: Yahoo Go

: MS TV IPTV edition, Web TV

: AOL TV

ONLINE VIDEO — According to eMarketer, spending for online video advertising in the United States will nearly triple in 2007 to $640 million. The entire Internet ad market in 2005 was $10.4 billion.

: Video Search/Player. Papa Google recently released a video player that works on a Mac, bringing it further into competition with Apple’s iTunes.

: Video Search (recently redesigned), Kevin Sites’ Hot Zone, Wow House, Richard Bangs Adventures, Yahoo Go, Yahoo Plus. Executives from Yahoo have recently backed away from TV-style Web shows.

: MSN Video, MSN Premium, MSN Plus

: AOL Video, In2TV, Truveo acquisition (Singingfish acquisition back in 2003, follow-up on that acquisition here.)

According to HitWise, Google is a distant fifth in this category in terms of popularity. YouTube has 42 percent of the market, followed by MySpace with 22 percent, Yahoo at 9.58 percent, MSN at 9.21 percent, Google at 6.48 percent, and AOL at 4.28 percent. The last four are iFilm (2.28 percent), Grouper (0.69 percent), DailyMotion (0.22 percent) and vSocial (0.09 percent).

ONLINE AUDIO — According to ComScore, Yahoo is the winner in this category through February 2006, with about 21 million unique visitors. Not surprisingly, Google, which only has a music search feature, isn’t even in the top five. iTunes is the biggest gainer, with about 15 million uniques and an increase of 182.6 percent over the same period in February.

: Google Music Search

: Yahoo Music, Yahoo Launchcast Plus, Yahoo Podcasts, Yahoo Music Unlimited, Yahoo Audio Search

: MSN Music, MSN/MTV deal “Urge,” Windows Media Player (this could be in several categories)

: AOL Music, Winamp, Shoutcast, Music Now

The interesting thing about this