'Tis the season for Microsoft to continue to be the undisputed underdog on the search engine market. The Redmond company, with the combined result from MSN and Live Search, has managed to amount to nothing more than the bronze medal in a three horse race against Yahoo and Google. This is the only conclusion than can be drawn as the end of 2007 closes in. Microsoft President of Platforms & Services, Kevin Johnson, unveiled plans for the company to take the no. 2 position as global online advertiser, in just three to five years.

Such a scenario is closely connected with the search engine market and the face-off between Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. In the end, the Redmond company desperately needs to improve its search audience, if it is to have a fighting chance against the Mountain View-based Internet giant. But this holiday season, as Microsoft is gearing up for a traditional spread, including fresh backed cookies, lighted candles, some mistletoe and a trimmed tree, something is missing... And it's not from Santa's bag. It's any sort of positive result on the search engine market.

According to statistics made available by market research firm Hitwise, the Search division over at Microsoft is going to have a gloomy Christmas. In November 2007, not only did MSN and Live Search fail to increase their footprint on the search engine market, but on top, Microsoft actually witnessed its share of the searches performed in the U.S. diminish. The Redmond company dropped to just 7.09% from 7.42% the previous month.

The drop is in line with the general trend of Microsoft's downspiral on the search market, but at the same time, the result casts a negative vote on Live Search 2.0. At the end of September 2007, the Redmond company debuted the evolution of Live Search taking it to version 2.0. At that time, Microsoft applauded a consistent volume of improvements delivered to the search engine under the Windows Live brand umbrella, including enhancements to the relevance of the results.

But, Live Search 2.0 failed to bring a breath of fresh air to Microsoft's comatose search business. And nowhere is this more evident than in the fact that Google's share of the search engine market jumped from 64.49% in October to 65.10% in November. Yahoo is currently at 21.21%, down from 21.65%.