
Users Love Microsoft, Yahoo Search -- When It's Branded With A Google Logo - lukas
http://www.businessinsider.com/users-love-microsoft-yahoo-search-when-its-branded-with-a-google-logo-2009-5
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KirinDave
This effect has actually been observed for quite awhile. For some inexplicable
reason, people associate Google with integrity and correctness. We've observed
people get objectively better results from non-google sources and then say
Google's was better. When asked why, they basically special plead the case for
Google (e.g., "This isn't what I meant to search for but it's very
interesting." is evidently a real excuse offered).

It's a very weird effect. Ignoring everything else, Google certainly wins at
cultivating brand loyalty. They're up there with Apple's brand loyalty in that
respect.

~~~
mdasen
There might also be another effect. Both Microsoft's search (under the MSN
name) and Yahoo's existed before Google's. Google came along and really beat
all the search engines that exited in terms of result quality. Microsoft and
Yahoo have since upgraded their algorithms and gotten a lot better. However,
people still associate the two as being the poor engines compared to Google's
that they used to be. People's subjective evaluation of quality isn't just
based on current results, but experiences they've had which might no longer
apply due to changes in the product. There's no reason to include Yahoo search
capabilities from 6 years ago in one's evaluation of Yahoo's results, but
that's how people's minds operate.

I think that's why Microsoft desperately wants to rebrand their engine (over
and over) so that people will think it's something new that they should
evaluate for the first time rather than the pre-Google product that they found
inferior to Google.

~~~
patcito
Yahoo first search engine was google embedded into yahoo. Before that, yahoo
was just a searchable directory of websites. Later yahoo switched to their own
search engine ouverture.

~~~
pmjordan
I'm pretty sure that was AltaVista, not Google.

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pg
In the article they make it clear it's more than just the logo. They also use
Google's page layout. That could help too. The colors are not the greatest,
but it's quite clear.

~~~
ssharp
There has to be something said for this. There is barely any noise on Google's
pages and pretty much everyone has used Google for the past few years. That
means that everyone is used to a search engine with very little noise. Yahoo,
MS, and Ask don't exactly have "flashy" search pages but just glancing at
their pages, you can see more distractions. I think this just amplifies the
thought that Google is better.

Going to another search engine just feels weird.

~~~
zain
Both Yahoo and MSN have noise-free interfaces you can use. See
<http://search.yahoo.com/> and <http://search.live.com/>.

~~~
netsp
Noise is also what you are not used to seeing. Yahoo!'s loho & drop down boxes
& hints seem a lot more noisy.

I think part of it is because they are. But part of it is because unfamiliar
is noisier then familiar.

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gojomo
'Bing' is actually an OK name -- it works as a verb, and you can easily
imagine a positive "bing! you've found it!" ringing sound.

But is it still 'Live.com' search under a different name? Because they're not
yet doing simple things that would make it easier for me to switch:

[3 liters in ounces] -- Google shows the answer, Live.com just miscellaneous
results without the answer

[ambidesterous] -- Google shows correction, useful results and typo results;
Live.com only random typo results

[ambidextrous] -- Google includes a distinguished dictionary 'definition' link
at a predictable place in the header; Live.com only provides that mixed with
other results and suggestions

[define:ambidextrous] -- Google provides a special list definitions culled
from various sources; Live.com just normal results. (I use the 'define:'
operator often.)

Why aren't MS and Yahoo at least aping these little easy-to-do things so that
a switch is as painless as possible?

Until they do, I have the impression they're not even trying, because no
product manager has created a list on a whiteboard of every way Google is
better and said: "give us rough parity in every single one of these". (That's
no way for a tiny startup to differentiate itself, but while trying to chisel
off market share in this mature market, Yahoo and MS have the budget and need
to do this.)

~~~
philwelch
"Bing" is an okay name, but Google's starting to become a genericized
trademark. It'll never legally become one but once your brand has reached
genericized trademark status you have a lot of brand power. And that brand
power is even more powerful online. It's one thing if you have a store shelf
where Kleenex and generic kleenex are right next to each other. It's different
if you're sitting at a computer thinking, "what site am I going to use to
google for facial tissues?".

There's a marketing concept--I've forgotten what it's called--where people
will think of a small number of brands for a given category. If a brand gets
in your brain this way it's viable. That's why we see so many silly
commercials that just say things like "Nike" with some sort of vaguely
inspiring imagery, or irrelevant things like polar bears advertising Coca-
Cola. It's not a matter of actually convincing anyone to _buy_ the product,
it's just to get their attention and get the brand name in their working
memory, so the next time they think "I need to get new sneakers" or "I want a
fizzy drink", their brain will enumerate the possible brands and something
constantly shoved into their mental attentions like Coke will come up instead
of RC Cola, even though they're next to each other on the same shelf.

With search engines, Google is in the enviable position of being the _only_
search engine that comes to mind. No one thinks anymore, "I need to go to a
website that will help me find fizzy drinks on the internet. Which sites do
that? Ask Jeeves? Google? Windows Live Search?". They just think, "I'm gonna
google me some fizzy drinks".

~~~
hrabago
This reminds me of Evite. It's one of the websites geeks like to reinvent, but
it's such just an uphill climb.

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Dobbs
So on my main computer I've actually switched to Yahoo.

I've found about the same quality of searches most of the time but
occasionally it just fails to give me what I want and I fall back to Google.
For general purposes I would say that yahoo might even be slightly better. It
seems to give me a bit less junk in my top 10 results.

Even with Yahoo's new interface it still seems messy relative to google.

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markessien
Google results are terrible for me. The same queries that used to work in 2001
no longer work. The only reason I don't switch is because of the layout.

~~~
seunosewa
Really? Which search engine works for you, then?

~~~
markessien
None actually.

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dant
If true, this strengthens the case that Google's monopoly is dangerous. The
defence of Google's market dominance has always been that users are not locked
in to Google and would switch the moment something better arrived. If Google
have built a brand loyalty that transcends that then they would be virtually
impossible to challenge.

~~~
Ardit20
Just because you can't compete with them it doesn't make them bad guys. When
google came into the market it didn't go to the government to say, hey
Micrsofot is too big and that msn search engine is too good, if only you guys
could disadvantage our competition!

~~~
dant
True. I'm not passing judgement or using subjective terms like "bad guys", I'm
just saying that the OP highlights what a robust monopoly Google has and that
the counter arguments that some have offered are wrong.

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TweedHeads
They should save those $100M, Bing will be another failure.

~~~
sosuke
hate to say it but bing does have that nice noun usage that google does, bing
it, let me bing that for you

live search and msn never enjoyed that

