Google Pulling Away From Pack

Google (GOOG Quote) gained market share in Internet searches in December at the expense of rivals Yahoo! (YHOO Quote) and Microsoft (MSFT Quote), according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company had a 48.8% share of the search market, up 5.7 percentage points from a year earlier. Yahoo! had 21.4%, a decline of 0.3 percentage points. Microsoft's MSN saw its share decline 3.1 percentage points to 10.9%.

The data further illustrate Google's dominance in search and the problems that its rivals have in making a dent in its lead. Overall, the number of searches surged 55% to 5.07 billion. Google showed a 75% increase in search queries to 2.5 billion, Yahoo! had 1.1 billion searches, up 53%, while MSN query levels surged 20% to 553.5 million. ...