EngineWorks

In our last blog post, we alerted you to Microsoft’s unsolicited bid to buy Yahoo! for almost $45 billion. A study released last week by comScore, which revealed that the Chinese search engine Baidu.com is the third most popular search query source in the world, provides even more insight into why the Seattle software shop is eager to gobble-up the Yahooigans.

This report, which is cited in an article titled “{Eat Baidu’s Dust, Microsoft“ on The Motley Fool Web site, states that Microsoft is a distant fourth in rank of the world’s most popular search engines, behind Google at the top, Yahoo! in second position, and Baidu in third.

Here’s the breakdown of each search engine’s world-wide market share in December 2007 from this revealing report:

Google     62.5%
Yahoo!    12.8%
Baidu        5.2%
Microsoft    2.9%
All Others    16.7%

In addition to bringing to light the lagging position of Microsoft in the online search industry, The Motley Fool article goes on to state that, “Mr. Softy can’t even claim to be playing small ball profitably. The company’s online arm continues to lose money”. Given this fact, you can see why this $45 billion offer was made last week.

Interestingly enough, even if Microsoft does acquire Yahoo!, the current annual revenue at the Sunnyvale search engine represents only about ten percent of total revenue at Bill’s Place. Of course, some deals aren’t just about the money!