... but they're still not a monopoly, at least if you ask the company. On Monday researchers at market research firm Hitwise released their monthly search share report, and their data indicates that Google has now topped 70% in terms of search market share.

Google reached a new milestone and accounted for 70.77 percent of all U.S. searches. Google’s share of searches increased 10% over the same month last year and 2% over the previous month. Yahoo! Search, MSN Search (including Live.com), and Ask followed with 18.65%, 5.36%, and 3.53% share of searches, respectively.

That's Google's tenth consecutive record high in monthly search share. And if you wonder why Microsoft is / was so keen on snagging Yahoo!'s search technology --- and thus its users --- MSN Search (which includes Live Search) has felt a lot of pain: it accounted for just 5.36% of U.S. Internet search in July. Last year Microsoft had 8.79%. Whoops.

But still, really, Google's not a monopoly, right?