Following on the heals of the earlier release of  search share numbers by Compete  and comScore, comes word, courtesy of SearchEngineWatch.com, that Hitwise and Nielsen/NetRatings rankings are out.

Nielsen’s numbers were similar to those reported by comScore, with Google remaining on top of the search pile with 50.8% of all searches in December 2006. Yahoo was second with 23.6% followed by Windows Live Search (MSN) with 8.4%.

Hitwise gives Google an even larger share, while also providing early figures for January 2006, pinning Google’s share at 63.1% and Yahoo at 21.6% for December 2006, with Google having the same figure for January, while Yahoo slipped to 21.4%.

No matter how you add it up, Google remains the dominant search engine.  And if Hitwise's numbers are correct, Google is garnering nearly two-thirds of all searches. Even with numbers hovering around the fifty percent margin, as reported by comScore and Nielsen, Google's numbers are envious.

Charles E. Wilson, former CEO of General Motors and the Secretary of Defense from 1953-1957, once was famously misquoted as saying, "What's good for General Motors is good for the country." At that time GM had over 50% of the auto market.

Is the day coming when we'll say, "What's good for Google, is good for the country?"

Okay, not the best of analogies, but Google's continued dominance of the search market remains incredibly impressive, and you have to wonder how much of the economy and commerce is tied to seraches completed on Google.