Search engines are pretty much the most popular part of the internet. It’s not possible for a person to have used the internet but never got a chance to use any search engine. Any information you need on anything, searching over the internet is the first resort and when it comes to search, it’s obviously about search engines. You need the recipe to make yummy donut? Google it. You need tips on how to lose weight? Search it for Bing. Since we are living in the information age, these things have become a separable part of our lives. Currently, everyone in three people in the world is using internet one way or other, and almost all of them use some search engine so they play a crucial role in our everyday lives. Now that the importance of these engines has been highlighted, let’s have a look at the most famous and most used search engines in the world.
1. Google
Starting off the list with the most famous one, Google has been in business for around 20 years now since its launch in September of 1997. Right now, Google is the most used search engine with around 72% of all searches on the internet being done through it. It is said to have 1.6 Billion active users per month and was programmed using Python, C++ and C programming languages. The search engine is available in 123 languages and is owned by Alphabet, which is Google’s parent company.
2. Bing
Second on the list is Bing. It has been developed by Microsoft and this comparatively new web search engine was launched in June of 2009. Microsoft used its own ASP.NET framework to develop the product. The market share for Bing is about 10.4% i.e. this many percent of searches are done through Bing. Estimated users of this search engine are said to be 400 Million per month.
3. Yahoo!
The oldest of all, Yahoo’s search engine was launched 22 years ago in 1995. It is the third largest search engine after Google and Bing and caters an estimated 300 Million users per month which make 7.78% searches on the internet. The search engine has been written in PHP and supports 40 languages.
4. Baidu
Baidu is a Chinese search engine launched in the year 2000 in Beijing, China. 7.14% searches over the internet are said to be done through this search engine. It is based on Chinese language but they have recently launched an English version too.
5. Ask.com
A question-answer based search engine was founded 21 years ago in June 1996. It caters 0.22% of the total searches making it the 5th ranked search engine.
Honorable MENTIONS
Apart from the general famous search engines, the following can also be categorized as specialized search engines.
· YouTube
YouTube is a search engine designated for video content. It is now owned by Google and was first launched in 2005.
· Amazon
Amazon is also a kind of search engine for e-commerce operating since 1994.
Note: All statistics are estimated in August 2016.