Google continued to increase its share of the U.S. search market in February, widening the gap that Microsoft hopes to fill by buying Yahoo.
In February, Google"s share of core searches by U.S. Internet users rose to 59.2 percent, up from 58.5 percent in January, according to figures from market research company comScore.
During the same period, Yahoo"s share slipped to 21.6 percent, from 22.2 percent a month earlier, while Microsoft"s share slipped to 9.6 percent from 9.8 percent.
AOL is clinging to a 4.9 percent share, while Ask saw its share rise slightly to 4.6 percent from 4.5 percent in January. Worldwide, the number three search engine is China"s Baidu.com, behind Google and Yahoo but ahead of Microsoft"s MSN-Windows Live.