Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is of the opinion that e-commerce giant Amazon is Google’s biggest competition as a search engine.
Speaking in Berlin, Schmidt, who currently serves as chairman of Google’s board of directors, claimed Amazon, despite not being a traditional search engine, is his company’s top rival in terms of search.
Schmidt was trying to hit back at accusations which accused Google of enjoying unchallenged market dominance. He stressed that his company shouldn’t be regulated as if it were a gatekeeper of the internet, since other companies like Amazon and Facebook are just as influential.
“Many people think our main competition is Bing or Yahoo,” Schmidt said.
“But, really, our biggest search competitor is Amazon. People don’t think of Amazon as search, but if you are looking for something to buy, you are more often than not looking for it on Amazon.”
Schmidt said that since many people are likely to go directly to Amazon.com if they’re shopping, it has become a bigger search competitor than Bing or Yahoo. He noted that people head to Amazon to look out for reviews and product pages to get their shopping queries and searches answered, but it’s still about getting information.
Schmidt stressed that in order to maintain its leadership position; Google will need to keep on innovating or “someone else will innovate around us — leaving us obsolete over time.”
According to ComScore’s August media report, Google, with about 233.1 million unique visitors for all its sites, was ranked the most popular site on the Internet, followed by Amazon for the sixth place attracting roughly 172 million unique visitors.
