December’s search engine market share data is out from Hitwise. Don’t bother with the link The Fast Friday Fact is that Google’s share increased 1 point and the next 3 players (Yahoo, Microsoft’s Bing) all lost share.
Google now has 72.25% of U.S. search engine market share. That’s why when people complain about the company or its policies, the battle is uphill. There is no real monopoly issue. Google beat everyone at search fair and square, including its two closest competitors, both of whom had search engines and a big lead before Google launched.
Your Fast Friday Fact is that US Internet search is Google’s world. You just get to use the site for free.
After I told a second client about Google Apps’ dashboard this week, I realized that many people are still unaware that the search and media company updates a page to tell users about outages related to Gmail, Google Docs and other product extensions.
When I’ve lived in areas prone to power outages, everyone in the neighborhood knew the power company’s phone number. Over time, we grew adept at parsing their statements about when power would be restored. Sometimes going to bed at 8:15 can be good for anyone… especially you Type A bloggers. The power company promoted their information service with refrigerator magnets, stickers for the handset of landline phones and vanity telephone numbers. The line was answered by a recording and callers with emergencies were told to call 911, but all you really want to know in a blackout is when the power is being restored. Every other decision falls out of the answer to that question.
Google is fast reaching utility status in many small businesses. The company’s webware is poised to carve increasingly larger chunks of Microsoft Office’s market share. When these apps or Gmail suffer an outage like the one on November 1, users need a fast way to find out when Gmail will be restored. The company hasn’t done a very good job of notifying people about their “Google Apps Status Dashboard” so bookmark the site now in case you’re email is down or your documents are inaccessible. And remember that it’s okay to go to bed early sometimes too.
Ready to learn more about how you spend your time than you may really want to know? Welcome to RescueTime. This program is one of the easiest ways I’ve found to monitor productivity.
Installing a simple program keeps track of the websites I visit and the programs I run. Simple configuration allows me to train the system to know that some sites are work related. Google, in my case, is more often “Business:Operations” rather than “Research”. And when Rescue Time doesn’t recognize a site or program, you get to categorize the time.
The result is a series of regularly updated reports that show how much productive time I’m spending. I knew, for example, that the sites I visit each morning took some time. I was surprised to learn the time some mornings was more than double. I also set the system to alert me when I spent an hour each day on “very distracting” applications or sites. Those site visits mount up fast. (cough) Eventually I found myself with dozens of hours in the database.
Like many businesspeople, I spent far too much time in email. There was also a lot of time in Excel. The real findings were the 5 and 10 minute visits to other sites. During a week, that time added up too. I remember reading a Bill Gates quote that he and Steve Ballmer would exchange calendars and critique each others time. Since Ballmer is apparently busy, I used Rescue Time. The program runs quietly in the background, doesn’t seem to use too many resources and is a good bargain at $64/year or only $8/month. Try it for a month or two and see what time you can rescue.
Note: Joe & the RescueTime team just wrote and suggested we share with everyone there is a referral program. I had seen that and promptly forgot all about it. So the link was here changed to a referral link. If you decide to install RescueTime, you get 2 weeks free for others you refer and 4 weeks if they get a paid account.
