The newest numbers from analysis firm comScore suggest that Bing owned 11.7 percent of the U.S. search engine market in March, while Google came in at 65.1 percent and Yahoo posted 16.89 percent. Those numbers represent an incremental month-over-month rise for Bing, which had an 11.5 percent market share in February--and a slight dip for Google, which previously had 65.5 percent. As my colleague Clint Boulton points out, Yahoo also managed to gain slightly after 13 consecutive monthly declines.

A few days ago, I posted Experian Hitwise's numbers, which calculated that Bing had dropped from 9.70 to 9.62 percent between February and March, a 1-percent dip replicated by Google, which also fell from 70.95 to 69.97 percent. Experian Hitwise also found that Yahoo posted a gain of 3 percent, from 14.57 to 15.04 percent of total searches.

Yahoo's the interesting statistic here. If its market share is truly evening out, then it could give analysts a better idea of how much market share Bing stands to inherit once Microsoft becomes the back-end search platform for Yahoo's various Web services. In turn, that gives a better idea of the competitive profile that a 'roided-up Bing will present vis-à-vis Google heading into 2011.

As Boulton points out, analysts at FBR Capital Markets are predicting that online advertising will grow at least 13 percent this year, with leaders in search and video. In turn, this means a larger share of revenues to fight over for Google, Microsoft, Yahoo (which keeps insisting that its user-end Web pages, bulked with new features over the past few months, are more than enough to keep it as a viable, independent online entity), and others in the space.

Microsoft's strategy within this paradigm, apparently, is to cede ground in traditional keyword search to Google, while focusing on gaining market share via nontraditional areas such as event-driven tasks and commercial queries. In what could perhaps be construed as validation for that strategy, Experian Hitwise's numbers showed Bing gaining strongly in verticals such as Health, Shopping, Travel and Automobiles. Google's strategy, of course, is to leverage its incredible mind-share and market-presence to maintain its huge lead over its competitors.

Given the titanic forces involved, however, it's unlikely in the short term that there'll be any drastic movement in these market shares. Still, I'm curious about what sort of event will shake the paradigm enough to see some real change.