New search engine numbers from research company ComScore, as reported by eWEEK earlier this morning, suggest that things are on the rise for Microsoft, showing Bing holding 9.9 percent of the market in October, Google continuing its dominance with 65.4 percent and Yahoo seeing its share dip slightly to 18 percent.

Combine that with new data from Experian Hitwise for October, showing Bing at 9.57 percent of the market, and I think we have enough data points to suggest that Microsoft is doing something right. Certainly it must boost the egos of the Bing team, who had to face widespread predictions of their search engine's demise even before its June launch.

What's interesting is that both studies show a slight but significant erosion in Yahoo's market share, despite Yahoo's $100 million ad campaign launched at the end of September. That's no surprise; the "It's You!" tag line at that campaign's heart makes little sense unless you're cognizant of Yahoo's most recent offerings, including giving users the ability to customize their main-page experience.

Microsoft, of course, signed a 10-year search and advertising deal with Yahoo over the summer, one that will see Bing power back-office search on Yahoo's sites while Yahoo's people handle worldwide sales for both companies. Following that deal, Yahoo's executives came out and declared that it was still a viable online competitor, that its front-end experience mattered more than operating its own search engine and that new upgrades to Yahoo Mail would surely pull in the crowds. They had to say something, I guess; even Napoleon in exile on Saint Helena needed to stomp around declaring how great things were back in the day.

Microsoft and Yahoo entered that deal because they had the same strategic goal: to roll back Google's dominance of the online space. Bing will have nearly 30 percent of the market sometime in 2010, if Yahoo's search engine market share translates directly to Microsoft. But as Yahoo's numbers continue that slow decline despite its massive ad campaign, and Bing shows no signs of failing even as Microsoft gears back its own marketing dollars, I have to wonder whether Microsoft needs Yahoo at all.