New Search engine report: Microsoft-Yahoo has no chance against Google

Microsoft is betting that a buyout of Yahoo will help in its battle against Google, but a new search report shows that's purely wishful thinking. Google continues to gain market share, while both Yahoo and Microsoft lose ground. Microsoft needs to learn that adding together two negatives doesn't equal a positive.

comScore just released the results of its February 2008 search engine survey, and for Microsoft, the results aren't pretty. Microsoft's share of search dropped from 9.8% in January to 9.6% in February. Yahoo took an even larger dip, from 22.2% to 21.6%. That means the combined Microsoft-Yahoo share dropped from 32% to 31.2%, a drop of .8%.

Both those drops are almost entirely attributable to Google gains, which went from 58.5% to 59.2%, an increase of .7%. You can see the chart, including results for other search engines, below.

Clearly, buying Yahoo won't solve Microsoft's problems. If Yahoo's market share is dropping even faster than Microsoft's how, exactly, will that help Microsoft? Buying Yahoo will only saddle Microsoft with another company whose clock is being cleaned by Google.

Rather than diverting its money, resources, and attention to the Yahoo buyout, Microsoft needs to rethink its online strategy, and build from its strength, instead of trying to add to its weakness. That means building some online version of Microsoft Office, and extending the links between the client version of Office and the Internet in general. Right now, Microsoft dominates the Office suite market, and that's its Trojan Horse for succeeding online.

If, instead, it buys Yahoo, and hopes that will help in its battle against Google, it's bound to fail.