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Chart: A Microsoft-Yahoo combo by the numbers

What would Microsoft gain by swallowing Yahoo for a proposed $44.6 billion? CNET News.com contrasts combined stats with Google's.

Tom Krazit Former Staff writer, CNET News
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Google, as the most prominent company on the Internet defends its search juggernaut while expanding into nearly anything it thinks possible. He has previously written about Apple, the traditional PC industry, and chip companies. E-mail Tom.
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Tom Krazit
2 min read
Microsoft's bid for Yahoo would create one of the world's largest Web companies, when examined using several different metrics.

The target of the proposed acquisition, of course, is Google, which enjoys a healthy lead in the search market but trails the potential combination of Microsoft and Yahoo in several important categories. Here's a look at the tale of the tape.

Microsoft-Yahoo deal in digits
What does $45 billion mean to Microsoft?
$59.09 billion Combined fiscal 2007 revenue of Microsoft and Yahoo. Most of that revenue, of course, comes from Microsoft's twin strongholds of its Windows operating system and its Office productivity software suite. MSN, Microsoft's online efforts perhaps most akin to Yahoo and Google, did $2.4 billion in revenue for Microsoft's fiscal 2007, compared with Yahoo's $7 billion in revenue. Google's 2007 fiscal revenue was $16.59 billion.
1.2 billion Combined unique monthly visitors to Microsoft and Yahoo's Web sites worldwide, according to December stats from ComScore. Google is the current leader in monthly unique visitors, while Microsoft and Yahoo are second and third, respectively. The combination of Microsoft and Yahoo's wide variety of sites would theoretically make it the first billion-user Web property, though a lot of people who currently visit both sites would get lumped into the overall figure. Google's unique visitors in December totaled 588 million.
31.5 Combined U.S. search market share percentage for Microsoft and Yahoo. With 56.3 percent of the search market, according to December figures from Nielsen, Google would still have a very healthy lead in search queries, which comprise the launching pad for everything else that these Web properties are trying to accomplish.
83.1 million Combined U.S. e-mail market share for Microsoft and Yahoo as of September, according to Nielsen. They would have a huge advantage over Google here, as both companies have been providing free Web e-mail for years, before Google got into the game with Gmail (which has about 13.6 million users). Yahoo is currently far and away the e-mail leader, with 55.5 million unique users, and AOL is still very much in this game, with almost 30 million unique users.
47 million Combined unique U.S. instant-messaging service users for Microsoft and Yahoo, according to September figures from Nielsen. Again, no contest here. AOL is the market leader, with AIM and 39.8 million unique users, but a Microsoft-Yahoo blend would surpass AIM with room to spare. With just 2 million users, Google Talk is barely on the instant-messaging map, trailing the Big Three, as well as Meebo and Skype.
15.6 Combined percentage of U.S. Internet visits for Microsoft and Yahoo, as of January 26, according to Hitwise. Page views might be on the out as the end-all, be-all metric of Web properties, but they still count for something. And a combined Microsoft-Yahoo company would generate more than double the page views of Google's current operations, which grab 7.7 percent of U.S. Web page visits.
Sources: ComScore, Nielsen, Hitwise, company records