Most Microsoft workers search with Google

[Larwee]

Microsoft executives have mentioned a few times how they plan to do better against Google in the search market. So, this might come as a little surprise to some people. Most Microsoft workers search with Google. For whatever reasons, it doesn't look as if the vast majority of Microsoft workers have enough confidence in their own search engine, or they are selecting Google instead of their own for some other reason.

Yahoo employees are more loyal to their own search engine that Microsoft workers are to their search engine. Still the majority of Yahoo employees also use Google for searching.

Possibly Microsoft and Yahoo could put a good spin on this and say that they workers are just searching with Google a lot to see what problems they can find with Google.

On the other hand, just about all Google employees search using Google.

In some studies, the Microsoft and Yahoo workers were using Google for searching in a larger percentage than the general population.

Possibly Microsoft and Yahoo could give some reasons as to why their workers are selecting Google when searching rather than their own search engines. They might even explain say that their employees have full confidence in their search engines and even tell why they should.

It would be very interesting to hear from some of the Microsoft and Yahoo workers as to why they use Google more than their own.

Here are links to some articles with more details.

http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.a...&src=site-marq

http://news.portalit.net/fullnews_Mi...ogle_1707.html

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32538

[Czar]

MSN and Yahoo are both lacking Google's convenience factor. It's been said for years that one of Google's key strengths is its plain-Jane interface, but for some reason the other major search players haven't released simple search panels - or they've hidden them behind anti-intuitive domain names such as search.msn.com or the poorly marketed altavista.com.

Both services draw strength from their portal approach and will likely remain one step ahead of Google in the race for control of content as a result, but both need to acquire or develop a catchy and intuitive search-only brand and roll-out their contextual affiliate programs internationally in order to come close to matching Google's convenience and aesthetic cleanliness.

I know that I generally use Google simply because it's so simple and natural to type google.com into the browser address bar, even though I know that I'll often get more relevant results if I took the time to type search.msn.com. It's strange how so many billions of dollars in search traffic can be influenced by convenience, but it's a reality that MSN and Yahoo still need to confront. Even in the broadband age, people want to be greeted by a search-only panel, not a portal, when they're looking for something specific.