Given all the recent hype around the Microsoft bid for Yahoo! and Google’s immediate defense (or offense), I wanted to provide a few search statistics to give you a different perspective on this pending deal.

Hitwise, a U.S.-based internet monitor which collects data directly from ISP networks, reported that for the week ending January 26, a combination of Microsoft/Yahoo! online assets represented 16% of all Internet visits, compared to Google’s 8%.

For search, Google dominates with 66% of search activity for January, while Microsoft/Yahoo! represented 28% percent of searches.

Other interesting points from the Hitwise report:
- Yahoo! email leads with 55% of U.S. market share with Google’s mail service, Gmail, capturing less than 6%.
- Yahoo! Finance owns over 29% of the U.S. market.
- Yahoo! News has 7% of the same market.

Here is the kicker - Microsoft’s sites rank 2nd in the same categories.

Now lets look at the recent study from comScore, a U.S.-based Internet research firm, that ranked the world’s 10 most popular search engines.

Google ranked 1st with 62% of global search market share and Yahoo! a distant 2nd with 13%.

Baidu ranks 3rd with over 5% followed closely by Microsoft’s sites with 3%.

In 10th place is Alibaba.com with 0.8% of global searches.

Now imagine what a dominant combination Microsoft + Yahoo! + Alibaba.com (and its parent Alibaba Group) makes and its ability to integrate/cross-polinate across all of its different properties.