Microsoft 's Search Sag Sours Shareholders

We're still waiting for the verdict: Zune, the "next gen iPod killer," or Zune::Microsoft as albatross::Ancient Mariner.

But this post is about an earlier ill-fated Microsoft expedition. The Seattle-Search blog mentions that December's search scores are in, and here's how the top three stack up:

Google +0.4 share with 47.3% of the market
Yahoo! +0.3 share with 28.3% of the market
Microsoft -0.5 share with 10.5% of the market

Here's the comScore release. In real numbers, that's Google with 3.2 billion queries, and MSN-Microsoft with 713 million. We note you can even use Google just to search Microsoft. Cheeky. AP reports that Google gained $7 on the news, while Microsoft shares dipped $0.45. Search Engine Land puts the longer-term trend into perspective with some astonishingly old-school Excel graphs.

So remember those heady days when Yusuf Mehdi, Senior VP of Information Services at MSN was on CNN saying:

A lot of people think, "Hey, ... Didn't Google become the popular search engine? And don't they just do a great job? And there's no room for improvement." Once people get a feel for Windows Live Search, they're going to say, "Holy cow, I had no idea that search could get this much better!"

Yeah, about that. Search Engine Land hammers another nail into Microsoft's search coffin by noting that even the release of Internet Explorer 7 did absolutely nothing for Windows Live.