Just came across this article on PC World; http://www.pcworld.com/article/160505/will_microsoft_rebrand_live_search_does_it_matter.html FTA: Crunching the Numbers Just look at the data. For consistency's sake, we'll compare Live's market share from April 2008 -- the month before the "Cashback" program launched -- with the most recent numbers available. We'll use data from two different companies to give us varied perspectives on both global and domestic usage. When it comes to the U.S., Live was grabbing 9.4 percent of all searches last April, according to ComScore. Since then, with the "Cashback" program and all the other various changes, Live has dropped about one point to 8.5 percent of the U.S. search market (as of January 2009, the most recent month ComScore has calculated). Internationally, Live was pulling in 2.5 percent of searches back in April of 2008, measurements by Net Applications indicate. It's since dipped down to 1.73 percent of the global market as of February 2009.
I really wish they could compete with the big G. Do think they could have made a dent in Google's search share had they bought Yahoo?..it seems like they would have the resources to put behind it.
It will take a hell of alot for anyone to over power Google, Yahoo was close a few years back.. but then they kind of died in a hole.