All major browsers (like Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome) have unique search engine preferences – i.e. they have partnered with particular search engines to provide default engines, homepages or toolbars.  Similarly, search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo! have inalienable interests in being the default engine or toolbar of popular browsers. But does affinity for a particular browser makes clients more likely to use a particular search engine? Let’s see what numbers say:

Microsoft Internet Explorer

In terms of availability, Microsoft Internet Explorer still controls the lion's share of the PC browser market. The latest versions of Internet Explorer come equipped with Bing integration, thus helping Microsoft dampen Google’s search engine hegemony.

The value of this damping effort is evident on the results:  Google’s search share on Internet Explorer is down by 4.2% over its overall market share, while Yahoo! and Bing and hold 20.7% and 18.7% of the IE search market respectively.  

Despite the disadvantage, Google still holds 55.8% of the search market on IE. Nevertheless since 60% of searches in America are performed on Internet Explorer, these seemingly thin slices of the pie assume a much greater significance.

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is the second most widely used browser of the world, with approximately 30% of worldwide browser usage market. The open source software has partnered with Google for default homepage and toolbar usage, and has thus enabled Google to engage the search market on two fronts – the other via its own Chrome browser.

Firefox’s default settings have pushed its users to opt for Google searches. In fact 73.4 % of the searches performed on Firefox taking place on Google, with Yahoo! and Bing holding 16.4% and 7.1% of the US Firefox search market respectively.  

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is a browser designed around Google search. This is precisely why 87.1% of searches that take place on Chrome are on Google.

In totality, Yahoo and Bing account for less than 12% of Chrome’s search share (8.3% and 3.6% respectively).  It goes without saying that most Chrome users are already loyal Google users, and therefore consider Chrome and extension of the Google package. Nevertheless Chrome currently holds a very small chunk of the worldwide browser usage market, and therefore lacks the punch to offset the overall dynamics.

Despite the option of customization, most users still prefer to use default search engines. The above statistics prove that browser choice and search engine usage are interconnected. Therefore the relevancy of securing the best browser-search engine combo for increasing the overall market shares of either product/service remaining integral.