Yahoo can credit Bing and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) for taking its share, which slipped from 15.1 percent in November to 14.5 percent to finish 2011, a precipitous drop at a time when percentage points, and even tenths of percentage points, come at a premium versus Google.
Indeed, Google saw its U.S. search share hike to 65.9 percent in December, up from 65.5 percent in November. Bing's ascension to the No. 2 position is the big news, as Microsoft has spent a lot of money to get there. Bing launched in June 2009, when Microsoft's search share was around 8 percent.
To put more muscle behind Bing, Microsoft in July 2009 struck a deal with Yahoo to power its partner's search queries and ads on the back end. Along the way, Microsoft paid Yahoo 88 percent of the traffic acquisition fees from ads as its online business hemorrhaged cash.
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