Tiago Bianchi
Research expert covering internet & gaming in Latin America and Spain
Get in touch with us nowSearch and advertising monopoly
Google Search remains the top player in the United Kingdom, holding more than 90 percent of the country’s referrals across all devices since 2018 and even higher shares in mobile devices. This does not mean the company sails completely calm waters: its global market share decrease in desktop devices is also now visible in the UK and, despite its biggest contenders still barely coming close to the search giant’s local market share, Microsoft’s competing service Bing has been increasing its quota on the British market. Meanwhile, privacy and sustainability-focused alternative search engines such as DuckDuckGo and Ecosia have surged in uptake, reflecting the local skepticism about how the company handles British online users’ privacy in collecting information to optimize ads and search results.Google’s arsenal in the UK
Google's dominant position in the UK market is, however, expected to continue through its main products, Android and YouTube. Its operating system is second only to Apple's iOS in the country’s mobile OS market, with over 46 percent of local mobile devices operating on it. Contributing to over 10 percent of its global revenue, YouTube is Google's most powerful asset in the British online market, a sector whose video ad spending in the UK is expected to reach almost 9 billion U.S. dollars in 2023. YouTube's monetization possibilities make it one of the most popular platforms for business-to-consumer (B2C) interactions and a particularly successful tool in the UK's music market, a sector that generated revenues of over 2.1 billion U.S. dollars in 2023 through streaming alone.YouTube and its various products are some of the most well-known brands in the United Kingdom, being considered the UK's most popular social network and one of the most recognizable music brands. It is also the country’s second-most popular video-on-demand platform and was the second-most visited website in the country in 2023, second only to Google's primary domain. While Alphabet’s restructurings are still not apparent in Google’s UK workforce, the parent company’s shift into AI and automation may see the country’s local market for safer investments, as well as an example of how Google and Alphabet’s many assets can assure their global leadership.
