Live Search 2.0 or no Live Search 2.0, Microsoft is slowly slipping into the gutter of the search engine market. But this does not mean that the Redmond company has thrown in the towel. Not by a long shut. Even as a bottom feeder of the search engine market, scraping along and surviving with the crumbs from Google's and Yahoo's search feast, Microsoft is looking at the stars. And in this respect, the Redmond company has set for itself a trajectory aimed at making it the runner-up on the online advertising market, behind Google, in three to five years. With the Mountain View giant having grown to become virtually synonymous with Internet search and advertising, Microsoft has quite a task ahead.

And at the end of 2007, there is simply no sunshine for Live Search. At a global level, Microsoft is in danger of becoming an insignificant player, nothing more than one among the anonymous pack at the bottom of the search market. Microsoft websites have attracted just 1.94 billion searches in December 2007, according to statistics made available by comScore. This means that worldwide Microsoft accounted at the end of 2007 for a share of just 2.9% of the market. In this regard, the Redmond company's search properties have suffered quite a hit, compared to August 2007, when they attracted some 2,1 billion queries worldwide.

Worldwide, Microsoft occupies just the fourth position behind Baidu.com, Yahoo and Google. But at the same time, there is quite a gap that separates the Redmond company from the occupant of the third position. In excess of 3,4 billion searches were performed through Baidu.com in December 2006, representing no less than 5.2% of all the searches. Worldwide, Yahoo's performance is also fading in comparison to Google. The Sunnyvale Internet giant only managed a little over 8,5 billion searches for a share of 12.8 of the market. Google remains the incontestable leader with no less than 41,3 billion searches out of the total of 66 billion flowing through its search engine. Worldwide, Google has the lion's share of the search engine market with 62.4%.