Golly, this internet business is lucrative

Call me naive but who'd have thought that search is one of the most profitable businesses on the web? If pressed, eBay or Amazon would have been my best guesses for biggest earner but, whaddya know, Google is right up there, just posting a $204m bonanza for the last quarter, neck and neck with eBay's $205m for October to December, though trailing Amazon's $347m, which was thanks to an exceptional quarter due to a one-off tax break.

All this moolah for linking a few (million) ads to queries on the world's most popular search engine? No wonder Microsoft wants a piece of the action, formally launching today its own search engine, which has been in beta for some months. The results don't seem any better with version 1.0, though thanks to its links to the Encarta encyclopaedia you've a better chance of finding quick facts than from many rivals.

Surprisingly, despite, Google's apparent dominance, latest stats show it commands only a 3% lead over Yahoo! (34.7% versus 31.9% of US searches).