searchstatsapril

msyhooThe monthly U.S. search stats from comScore are out for March and it shows Google slipping just a bit with Microsoft continuing to grow its search share, albeit slowly.

Google dropped 0.4 percentage points last month, falling to 67.1 percent of the U.S. search engine market. Microsoft, meanwhile, grew 0.2 percentage points to 16.9. That’s up 0.4 points from the beginning of the year.

Microsoft’s search partner, Yahoo, grew by 0.2 percent to 11.8 percent of the market.

Microsoft has seen Bing’s market share climb significantly in recent years. Microsoft provides the underlying technology for Yahoo’s search engine and search ads, but the partnership between the companies hasn’t paid off like the companies had hoped.

Speaking last February, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, the former Google executive, acknowledged that the Microsoft-Yahoo partnership isn’t meeting expectations in terms of market share or revenue.

“One of the points of the alliance is that we collectively want to grow share rather than just trading share with each other,” Mayer said. She added: “We need to see monetization working better because we know that it can and we’ve seen other competitors in the space illustrate how well it can work.”

Also in February, Yahoo and Google announced an agreement to put ads from Google’s AdSense and AdMob systems on Yahoo sites, a clear sign that Mayer is willing and able to do business with her former colleagues at Google.

Microsoft, meanwhile, continues to bash Google with its “Scroogled” campaign, with the latest bombardment focusing on privacy issues with the Google Play Store.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.