Latest search market share numbers show why Steve Ballmer wants Yahoo so badly

The latest numbers on U.S. search market share show why Microsoft CEO Steve Balllmer wants to acquire Yahoo so badly that he's willing to pay more than $40 billion.

As we've told you before, we still think it's a mistake, because buying Yahoo isn't going to solve the Google problem for Microsoft.

For proof, look at the February search numbers from comScore show a continuation of a long-term trend: Google's market share rose to a record high, while Yahoo's sunk to a record low.

Google now gets just under 60% of search queries, nearly three times Yahoo's share of almost 22% and six times Microsoft's share of just under 10%.

Given that Yahoo and Microsoft have nothing to show for their billions of dollars of investment in their respective search businesses, I still don't see how combining the two is going to yield a different result.

One troubling trend that's worth watching for all search companies -- overall year-over-year market growth decelerated to 15%, a significant drop from the 23% year-over-year growth in January. 

That could be do in part to the law of large numbers, but one other number from the report makes it a trend worth watching.

The total number of searches decreased from January, and the 5.8% sequential drop is the largest in at least six months.

That's a reminder that the U.S. search business, now more than a decade old, likely has already seen or will soon see the end of 20% annual growth.