Google and Yahoo's combined market share approaches 90 percent
Google and Yahoo lawyers are in Washington today, trying to argue that a deal to outsource much of Yahoo's search advertising business won't give Google undue control over the market. A new Hitwise report released today should make their task a bit more difficult. It reveals that in June, Google searches accounted for 69.2 percent of all U.S. queries; Yahoo, 19.6 percent. Together, that's 88.8 percent. Third-place irrelevancy Microsoft comes in at 5.5 percent — which isn't enough to make a dent in the search-ads market. Advertisers tell us that giving Google that much control over the market could ratchet up ad prices by 25 percent.