G2’s Game-Changing Acquisition: The Software Industry’s New Gatekeeper

The software industry is buzzing with concern and curiosity following G2’s blockbuster acquisition of Capterra, Software Advice, and GetApp from Gartner. Announced in late January and slated to close in Q1 2026, this deal represents a seismic shift in the B2B software discovery landscape, consolidating several of the most influential platforms under a single corporate umbrella.

The Numbers Behind the Power Play

The scale of this acquisition is nothing short of staggering. According to G2’s own disclosures, the combined entity will now host approximately 6 million verified software reviews and reach more than 200 million software buyers annually across thousands of categories. To put that in perspective, that’s roughly the population of Brazil engaging with these platforms every single year.

Individually, these platforms were already behemoths in their own right. G2 boasts over 3 million verified reviews on its platform, while Capterra publicly states it hosts more than 2.5 million reviews across business software categories. Software Advice and GetApp, both part of Gartner Digital Markets, contribute additional substantial review inventories, though Gartner has historically been tight-lipped about exact figures per site.

But raw numbers only tell part of the story. A groundbreaking study by SE Ranking, measuring review-platform citation share in AI answers and search results, reveals the true extent of this consolidation’s impact:

• G2 accounted for approximately 23.1% of review-platform citations
• Capterra captured around 17.8%
• Software Advice represented roughly 12.8%

(GetApp was included within the Gartner Digital Markets cluster and not listed separately in this analysis.)

When you add these figures together, the implications become clear: platforms now owned by G2 represent approximately 53-54% of global software-review visibility in this dataset. Industry analysts estimate that including GetApp’s additional reach pushes that figure to roughly 55-58% of review and discovery influence, depending on the methodology used.

Monopoly or Market Dominance?

In strict legal terms, G2 doesn’t technically qualify as a monopoly. Competition authorities in both the EU and US typically reserve the “monopoly” designation for market shares well above 70%. However, a share above 40-50% can qualify as a “dominant position,” particularly in markets with strong network effects—a category that software discovery increasingly fits.

The review platforms have become gatekeepers in the software buying journey. For many businesses, especially SMBs and mid-market buyers, these sites are the first and sometimes only stop before engaging vendors. As generative AI tools increasingly surface software recommendations based on existing review databases, control over those datasets becomes even more consequential.

Why the Industry is Holding Its Breath

Vendors and analysts are pointing to several critical risks that have the software community on edge:

Pricing Power: With fewer alternative platforms, vendors may find themselves with reduced ability to diversify their demand generation strategies. This could lead to increased costs for visibility and potentially squeeze smaller vendors who can’t afford premium placements.

Ranking Influence: Consolidated control over taxonomies, badges, and visibility logic could shape outcomes across categories. When one entity controls the rules of the game across more than half the playing field, questions of fairness inevitably arise.

AI Amplification: As AI search tools rely increasingly on dominant review sources, concentration at the data level may translate into disproportionate downstream influence. The platforms that train tomorrow’s AI recommendations are being consolidated today.

The Bottom Line

G2 is not a monopoly in the strict legal sense, but by combining G2, Capterra, Software Advice, and GetApp, the company has moved into clear gatekeeper territory, with control over more than half of global software-review influence by several independent measures. That level of concentration explains why the software industry, and potentially regulators, are beginning to ask whether G2’s growing power has gone too far.

The acquisition represents a pivotal moment in the software industry’s evolution. As the deal moves toward its Q1 2026 closing date, all eyes will be on how G2 manages this unprecedented concentration of influence—and whether the industry’s concerns will translate into regulatory scrutiny.

tags

G2Acquisition #SoftwareDiscovery #TechConsolidation #MarketDominance #B2BSoftware #ReviewPlatforms #TechIndustry #DigitalMarkets #AIRecommendations #SoftwareGatekeepers

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