Google vs. Yahoo

[scorrpio]

Anytime I need to find something on Internet, I use Google. I remember someone once telling me: what's so special about Google, Yahoo search is just as good...

Couple days ago, my faith was soundly confirmed. A friend who got a Yahoo Plus email account asked me to help set up his Outlook to get his mail. I know that Yahoo Plus allows this, so I started rooting around Yahoo mail help pages, searching for terms like 'POP3, Outlook, SMTP'. Zip, Nada, Empty. Not a word on setting up this stuff.

Frustrated, I google for "Yahoo mail POP3 setup'. Top result? Yahoo help page containing EXACTLY what I need. Servers, ports, etc. Google locates within Yahoo what Yahoo cannot locate within itself. Ironic, eh?

[Ed62]

Although I use both on occasion, Google is my first choice. Being fair, I have to say there has been a time or two when Yahoo provided results that Google didn't. But that's not the norm.

Ed

[Ken Massingale]

I honestly don't understand why anyone uses any search tools other than Google.

[JR]

Hmmm, I've always used Yahoo.

I could just never warm up to Google. Yahoo's results seem to be more intuitively organized (for my pea brain?), whereas Google just seems to return reams of information, much of which is not on point.

JR

[onedash]

I Yahoo...

[Slik Geek]

The first search engine that I used in my early internet years was Yahoo. When Google came along, I heard raves about its effectiveness. I tried it and found that indeed the search returns got me to what I was looking for quicker. Now, Google is my engine of choice. If I don't like what I get after a couple of pages, I frequently try Yahoo.

[scorrpio]

The idea is to learn a few tricks.
Check http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/features.html sometimes. I think my usage of Google became 4-5x more efficient after reading that.

[Jeffrey Schronce]

Google = My IE Homepage

[LarryG]

Google = My IE Homepage

Same here. I've been using Google exclusively since, I don't know, about 1998 or 1999, I guess ... a friend told me about it when it was virtually unknown, and possible even still in beta. I instantly liked, and still do, the ultra-clean home page. Whenever I tried to use Yahoo or Lycos or similar, all I could see was clutter.

[crokett]

Google all the way for me. Including google earth and google maps. The Google toolbar for my web browser is really cool.

[Alex Franke]

Google is pretty cool, but they're results are pretty darn strage every once in a while.

For example, I have a tutorial online that's been popular among home recording studio folk ever since Google got into the business. Up until last month, when someone searched on the title of the page, "How to Build a Studio Rack", the page would come up first in the list. It hasn't been changed for years (with only some minor updates) but now for some unexplained reason it comes up third from the end -- number #790!

Yahoo dutifully reports it as #1.

I think the folks at Google make decisions seemingly on a whim that have a broad and dramatic effect like this. Something like: "This month let's shaft Amazon affiliates -- they couldn't possibly have valuable content, right?"

It's pretty frustrating. The bigger and more powerful the company gets, they more likely they are to push you around... I wonder if that's what's happening at Google...

[jseklund]

I too am an avid Googler. I don't know why you would use anything else. Having said that, I have wondered lately if their results are becoming more obscure. I can empathize with people saying they get useless results on Google, and lately I wonder if they are skewing things for advertising revenue or some other business strategy. They definately dominate the market.

Yahoo was the first for me, but I quickly switched to Alta Vista. I would use Alta Vista/Yahoo! together. I was aware of Google far before I started using it, but it just somehow took over and I forgot entirely about Alta Vista. I will RARELY use Yahoo for something I can't find on Google, but that's maybe 2-3X per year.

Can anyone Google "White and Nerdy"?

[billwmeyer]

I usually go to dogpile first. If I don't find what I want there I Google. I do use Ask.com frequently too.

Bill