Yahoo loses market share as Microsoft, Google gain

San Francisco: Google and Microsoft took a bigger share of the US search-engine market last month, while Yahoo lost ground, according to ComScore, a market research company that rovides data to many of the large internet businesses.

Google's share rose to 66.6 per cent in December from 66.2 per cent in November, while Microsoft grew to 12 per cent from 11.8 per cent, according to ComScore in Reston, Virginia.

Yahoo dropped to 16 per cent from 16.4 per cent.

Google, which depends on search advertising for most of its revenue, is working to maintain dominance as its biggest rivals team up.

Yahoo is farming out its search functions to Microsoft's Bing, with the two companies splitting revenue.

The US search-ad market generated $12.4 billion (Dh45.54 billion) last year, up 16 per cent from 2009, according to EMarketer in New York.

Microsoft, in Redmond, Washington, fell 36 cents to $28.19 yesterday on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Google, in Mountain View, California, dropped 18 cents to $616.69, while Yahoo, in Sunnyvale, California, rose 10 cents to $16.75.