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Microsoft, Yahoo, Ask.com watch Google sprint ahead

Well over two-thirds of the US search market's queries passed through the digestive tract of Google, while its next three closest competitors gave up share.

...public indicators suggest that Yahoo!’s search and page view shares have declined.
-- Microsoft's Steve Ballmer tells Yahoo's board the awful truth.

The CEO of Microsoft gets an Incomplete for his analysis of the search market. Yes, Yahoo did decline from February to March 2008. So did Microsoft's search properties at MSN and Live.com.

Analysis firm Hitwise said "Yahoo Search, MSN/Live Search and Ask.com each received 20.29, 5.25 and 4.09 percent respectively. The remaining 46 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.72 percent of U.S. searches."

Yahoo and Microsoft each gave away 0.30 percent of search market share month over month. Ask.com dropped 0.07 percent. Google gained 0.81 percent, meaning they not only took share from their top three followers, but parts of the next 46 most trafficked engines as well.

How that translates into the bottom line at Google should be a little clearer later this month. The search advertising giant announced they would disclose Q1 2008 financial results on Thursday, April 17, at 4:30pm ET.