Lost Toolbar Deals May Sap Yahoo’s Market Share

Last year, both Hewlett-Packard and Acer stopped making Yahoo the default search option on their computers. Unfortunately for Yahoo, those decisions don’t seem ready to stay in the past, as one source indicates the company might gradually lose three percentage points of market share as a result.

"A person familiar with the situation" said the loss will occur over the next 12 to 18 months, according to Scott Morrison. Which obviously involves a lot of assumptions about the long term.

Also, for whatever it’s worth, Morrison wrote, "Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo acknowledged that losing the deals could cost it some share, but said the estimate of three percentage points was higher than its calculations suggest. Prabhakar Raghavan, who is responsible for Yahoo’s search strategy, declined to be more specific."

Still, depending on whether you prefer to start with the February standings from comScore, Hitwise, or Nielsen, the predicted loss would leave Yahoo with a market share of 17.6, 14.0, or 13.7 percent, respectively.

It’ll be interesting to see if Yahoo responds with any sort of extra push to have people reinstate it (or set it for the first time) as their default search provider.