While a complete takeover of Yahoo is no longer in Microsoft's plans, any sort of pseudo-marriage between the two companies might just prove a case of too little and too late. This because both Microsoft and Yahoo continue to see their shares of the search engine market eroding constantly, in the context in which they have so far failed to form a common front against Google. According to the latest statistics made available by comScore and Nielsen Online, Google is nothing short of unstoppable in the U.S. where its has climbed well over 60% of the market. Traditionally, the U.S. is the market with the most comprehensive balance of forces for the three search providers, because in other parts of the world Google's domination is as high as 70%, and even over that.

"In April, Google Sites extended its share of core searches to 61.6%, up from 59.8% the previous month. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 20.4%, followed by Microsoft Sites (9.1%), AOL LLC (4.6%), and Ask Network (4.3%). Americans conducted 10.6 billion searches at the core search engines, representing a 2-% decline versus March. Google Sites saw more than 6.5 billion core searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.2 billion, and Microsoft Sites with 961 million," comScore revealed.

Live Search, at the end of the spring 2008 update is down to 9.1% of the search engine market from 9.4% in March and 9.6% in February when it made the $44.6 billion unsolicited acquisition proposal for Yahoo. During the same period, Yahoo's share of search declined from 21.6% to just 20.4%. And while Microsoft and Yahoo were negotiating a merger, both Live Search and Yahoo Search were losing audience, with Google ready to pick up the crumbs and jump from 59.2% in February all the way to 61.6% the past month.

Google's growth on the U.S. search engine market is even more impressive taking into consideration data provided by Nielsen Online. The Mountain View search giant is up to 62.0% of the searches, accounting for over 5.1 billion queries just last month. Back in February, Google owned a share of just 58.7% of the U.S. searches which was equivalent to some 4.5 billion queries. Nielsen Online reports that Microsoft dropped from 11.2% in February to 9.7% in April, counting now under 800 million queries.

At this point in time, Microsoft's Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer confirmed that the Redmond company is no longer bidding for the whole of Yahoo, but that it is taking into consideration alternatives. They are reported to involve Microsoft acquiring the search engine and online advertising divisions of Yahoo, as well as a minority stake in the Sunnyvale Internet giant.