WebProNews

Don't look for any fireworks displays over Mountain View tonight.  Hitwise's latest report on the search market is in, and between January and February, Google's share grew by just 0.02 percent.  Yahoo and Microsoft made similarly yawn-worthy movements on a month-to-month basis.

 

Hey, at least we're being honest, right?  So here are the standings: Google wound up in control of 72.11 percent of the market.  Yahoo saw its share go down by 0.77 percent and land at 17.04 percent.  Microsoft's share rose from 5.44 percent to 5.66 percent.

Maybe, just maybe, the American search market is reaching an equilibrium point, then.

But there was an interesting blip farther down the scale.  Ask, which is in fourth place, managed to gain 0.43 percent of market share between January and February, and since it started at 3.31 percent (making for a final position of 3.74 percent), that's not bad at all.

Ask also managed to lose less share on a year-to-year basis than Yahoo and Microsoft (10 percent versus 17 percent and 20 percent, respectively).  Hitwise determined that Google gained 8 percent year-over-year.