As Yahoo considers Microsoft's recent $44 billion acquisition bid, new research shows that Google would still maintain a lead over the proposed combination in terms of search.

Nielsen Online said Monday Google topped January's search rankings with 4.22 billion queries, or a 56.9 percent share. Yahoo came in second for the month with 1.41 billion searches, or a 19 percent share, followed by Microsoft.

Full details are below:

Provider Searches Share of Searches per

(000) Searches Searcher

1. Google Search 4,223,703 56.9% 39.6

2. Yahoo! Search 1,407,062 19.0% 25.1

3. MSN/Windows

Live Search 894,129 12.1% 30.1

4. AOL Search 350,592 4.7% 17.2

5. Ask.com Search 179,362 2.4% 11.0

6. My Web Search 71,593 1.0% 12.4

7. Comcast Search 40,007 0.5% 11.7

8. AT&T Worldnet

Search 24,546 0.3% 10.1

9. NexTag Search 23,084 0.3% 2.6

10. Dogpile.com Search 20,208 0.3% 10.5

Google Microsoft Yahoo