Whilst, in the U.S., Google had only a 64 percent share of searches this January (ahead of Yahoo’s 15 percent and Bing’s 10 percent), Google in the UK is so super-dominant, it’s a race of one - and Google just keeps pulling away...

Google served 88 percent of all January UK searches - Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) just 3.9 percent and Bing only 3.6 percent.

But, in the race of runners-up, Microsoft can take heart - as we approach its first anniversary, Bing has significantly improved its fortunes relative to the chasing pack; it’s now about to overtake Yahoo for second place amongst UK search engines...

Ask.com, too, has benefitted from Jeeves’ reappearance, while AOL (NYSE: AOL) haemorrhaged searchers last summer.

In fact, Yahoo’s UK share has crashed in the last year - from 5.2 percent to 3.9 percent. So, while a combined Yahoo-Bing might look good on paper, by the numbers the deal still doubles its share to only 7.5 percent.

Bing already has twice as many unique search users as Yahoo - 15.5 million a month, against just 8.8 million. At this rate, against the historical odds, Microsoft will go in to the partnership, in which it will power Yahoo’s search, the more powerful partner.

But, all the while, Google keeps printing money. No wonder murmurs are growing in Brussels about Google’s dominance.