Well, it goes like this, Google starts 2008 on top of the world, the world wide web that is, while Microsoft sinks toward the bottom of the search engine market. The Mountain View-based company is increasingly becoming synonymous with Internet search, as Google simply manages to fit into mundane culture and trends. At the same time, Yahoo is a colossus not easily dislodged, and its survival skills keep it tucked away safe between Google and Microsoft, in terms of market share. And the Redmond company continues to be a perpetual bronze winner in a three-horse race against Yahoo and Google.

The latest statistics for the search engine market in the U.S., made available by Hitwise, reveal that, at the end of December 2007 and the beginning of January 2008, Google has dug in its roots even deeper. The Mountain View-based search giant jumped from 65.10% in November to 65.98% in December, last year. And overall, Google is also on the increase, having grabbed a larger market share at the end of 2007, compared with the same period in 2006 when it only accounted for 63.15%.

Yahoo is also on a descendant trajectory, but overall, the Sunnyvale company is stagnating, although oscillating slightly a few percentages up and down. Stagnation is never a good sign and, as far as Yahoo is concerned, it is in fact an illustrative example of the lack of innovation. The Sunnyvale Internet giant is essentially going on nothing but momentum alone, and in this context, it might just see its share of the market slip from under itself. Yahoo is credited with 20.88% in December 2007, down from 21.21% the previous month and 21.62% in December 2006.

"Google accounted for 65.98 percent of all U.S. searches in the four weeks ending December 29, 2007. Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask.com each received 20.88, 7.04 and 4.14 percent respectively. The remaining 49 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.71 percent of U.S. searches", Hitwise explained.

And although Microsoft is pouring a great deal of efforts (especially financial resources, as Live Search is one of the company's divisions that is actually losing money) in order to drive the evolution of its search engine, the combined results of Live Search and MSN are still on a downward spiral. The introduction of Live Search 2.0, in the third quarter of 2007, did little else outside permitting Microsoft to catch up with its direct rivals, Google and Yahoo, as far as the search offerings, features, functionality and capabilities were concerned. But the Redmond company is finding out how difficult it is to fuel a growth of audience. In December 2007, Live Search lost market share and is down to 7.04%. It had 7.09% in November of the past year, and 9.80% in the last month of 2006.