Google Take All

We see little to stop Google from reaching 70 percent market share eventually; the question, really, comes down to, ‘How long could it take?’”

– RBC Capital Markets analyst Jordan Rohan, March 2006.

No wonder the Department of Justice was going to file suit to prevent Google’s (GOOG) proposed advertising partnership with Yahoo: The company controls nearly three quarters of the search market. Research outfit Hitwise reports that Google’s share of the U.S. Internet search market rose to 71.7 percent in October from 71.16 percent in September. A nice little jump from the 64.49 share it claimed a year ago.

And what of Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT)? Well, they fared about as you would expect. Yahoo’s share fell to 17.74 percent in October from 18.06 percent in September and 21.65 percent a year ago. In contrast, Microsoft’s share rose slightly to 5.4 percent, up from 5.36 percent in September.

Sadly, that’s a decline of about two percentage points year-over-year. Not even a respectable showing for an also-ran. ‘Course, that will all change if Microsoft ever gets around to acquiring Yahoo–or, at least, its search business. Together the two companies would control almost, but not quite, a quarter of the search market.