Gauging Google's Bite

Google(GOOG Quote) may be an even bigger fish in the search pond than people believe.

The company dominates the search market to a greater degree than anyone has reported, controlling an "effective market share" of 90% to 95%, according to Trip Chowdhry, a managing director at Global Equities Research.

Using a different methodology, leading industry researcher ComScore, which released figures Monday for traffic trends in December, placed Google's market share at a 47.3%, compared with second-place Yahoo!'s(YHOO Quote) 28.5%.

Chowdhry arrived at the figure by asking industry contacts to tally their access logs, which show how a user landed on a particular Web site. ComScore, on the other hand, reports the data that it extrapolates from the roughly 2 million Web surfers around the globe who allow the research firm to peer into their Internet browsing habits, says Gian Fulgoni, ComScore chairman. ...