14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft's search properties, with Live Search at the forefront, are as well as inexistent in Europe. The Redmond company has a share of just 1.9% of all the volume of searches in Europe, which makes Microsoft an insignificant player. In March 2008, according to statistics released by comScore, Microsoft managed to attract only 469 million searches in Europe. This is nothing compared with the 19,434 billion queries that were conducted through Google in March. And not even acquiring Yahoo would have made a difference for the Redmond company, as the Cupertino-based Internet giant accounted for a share of 2.0% and just 486 million searches, while Google reigns supreme with 79% of the European search engine market.
"With nearly 80% of all searches conducted in March, Google is far and away the leading search property in Europe," explained Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore. "However, we are seeing key local players show leadership in Eastern Europe where English is spoken less than in Western markets. With Russia's online population now the fastest growing in Europe, it is likely that some of these local search engines will continue to gain traction and market share."
In the native U.S., Microsoft is fairing a tad better than over the pond. For March 2008, comScore revealed that the Redmond company owned a total of 9.4% of the search engine market. "In March, Google Sites extended its share of core searches to 59.8%, up from 59.2% the previous month. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 21.3%, followed by Microsoft Sites (9.4%), AOL LLC (4.8%), and Ask Network (4.7%)."
Meanwhile, Microsoft has completely taken its sight of Yahoo, withdrawing its initial $44.6 billion takeover bid, and ending all negotiations as it was willing to pay just $50 billion and not $55 billion the Sunnyvale company had asked for. Instead, the Redmond giant announced that it would focus on a new strategy designed to increase its shares on the search engine and online advertising markets organically.
According to the latest statistics from Microsoft, a total of 2.16 billion queries are conducted through Live Search per month. Microsoft's search engine has managed to index in excess of 20 billion documents, over 400 million images and more than seven million instant answers.