I would imagine that as more people use Google, a smaller percentage of those people will be satisfied. Having the largest market share, Google becomes the default for many who don't actually choose it consciously.

Conversely, people still using Yahoo are likely choosing it because they like Yahoo. This makes them more likely to express satisfaction with it.

One area that might have a lot to do with the difference is in email/chat. Yahoo is WAY WAY better with their chat service, and at least dead even on mail, so for the younger crowd that doesn't care so much about arcane search stuff that would tip things in favor of Yahoo.

Ergo it sucks more. Speed is all. Let me sift quickly through the results. Thanks.

excepting a VERY small minority of nerds who would notice, google's incremental 'improvements' mean nothing to me...

(or any other search engine's incremental improvements)

one of the main reasons i went google (now i scroogle), was the minimalist/clean 'interface'; one of the main reasons i now scroogle, were the many instances of google, well, doing evil...

one of the main reasons i hate nearly ALL 'search' engines, is how i can search for something related to the (fictional example) "American Association of Associations Against Associating with Asocial Associates", and the first 10-20 hits will have NOTHING to do with the particular subject which i know to exist...

very uncool...

in general, i am not impressed by search engines; NO MATTER how detailed i get in my search terms (which seems to hurt more than help), it is apparently impossible to narrow down the range of hits to include the results which i KNOW to exist, but i have to wade 2-3-4 pages deep to find them (IF i see them listed at all !)...

very annoying...

art guerrilla

aka ann archy

eof

Yahoo is WAY WAY better with their chat service, and at least dead even on mail

Hunh?? I don't know about chat. Google talk works for me, but I'm not really much of a chatter. On the other hand (!!!), I can't believe you could talk about gmail and Yahoo mail in the same breath, let alone believe that Ymail is "dead even" with gmail.

I have accounts with both, and there is a huge reason why gmail is my primary account: in terms of both ease of use and spam filtering it is lightyears superior to Ymail.

My yahoo address appears absolutely nowhere on the web, nor have I given it to more than a half-dozen people or companies (personally known to me, and with well-established privacy policies), nor have I ever used it to subscribe to a list of any kind, and yet every time I check my mail there, I find at least as much SPAM as genuine mail in my Inbox.

My gmail address, on the other hand, is linked to several different places on the web, is on my business card, and subscribes to a dozen or so mail lists. The gross volume of SPAM received by both accounts is enormous, with considerably more going to gmail. And yet, I find very little SPAM in my gmail inbox.

In fact, since I shut down a business web site and stopped having that business mail autoforwarded to my gmail about 9 months ago, I'll bet you could count the number of SPAM mails that made it through to that inbox on the fingers of one hand. At least that much makes it through to my Yahoo inbox every 2-3 days!

I procrastinate about checking my Yahoo account because getting to it can be a bit of a hassle. I should confess here that I use Google ("igoogle") as my browser's home page, so I have a preview of my gmail account right there, and going to my inbox takes one click. (On the other hand, I have a similar page on Yahoo, and if I were using it, clicking on the mail icon there would not take my to my Inbox.) I do have a link on my Google homepage to http://mail.yahoo.com, but that doesn't take me to my inbox (or a signin page followed by my inbox) either! Rather, clicking it (or the link on my Yahoo homepage) takes me to Yahoo Mail's welcome page, loaded with ads for things I'm not interested in, from which I can click yet again to get to my SPAM-laden inbox. And there's no way to make your inbox the default page.

I suppose that ultimately ease of use depends on what one's become used to, and that there are numerous reasons why users of either gmail or Yahoo would find the other "more difficult" simply because so much is different. That said, I should probably shut up right now, but . . .

I would be very surprised if any web-savvy, objective user who had never used either before were to try them each for a period of time and come out of the experience not preferring gmail over Yahoo.

How's that for setting myself to be brutally shot down???

;-)

- Stuart Laird

P.S. I just logged in to my Yahoo account to make sure I was right about there not being an option to skip the "Welcome" page (I was.) and found one real mail and four SPAMs in my Inbox.

Undoubtedly....

Yahoo has more services to offer than Google, whereas google was best only in one thing.. their search. However their dominance in search will be going down as better indexing algorithms are coming into play.

For the person just above me whose primary email id is Gmail, should do a comprehensive comparison of the two services. Yahoo has better chance of Spam protection than any email service provider if you use their "disposable address" facility. I admit I am a hardcore Yahoo! fan but that is because it gives me better online experience than Google.

1. I can redirect my searches to You Tube, Google, Google scholar right from Yahoo search box using Yahoo OPen Shortcuts. Can't do that in google.

2. My Mails outlook type configuration (reading pane etc.) gives a better experience in reading and writing mails

3. Yahoo! Go... a Yahoo! product which is the only thing I use on my PDA... It is my email client, maps client, search client, rss reader, news reader, weather monitor, photo uploader, chat client, addressbook synchronizer... everythign I care for.

4. Yahoo music videos.. one of the biggest collection of music audios and videos on the net

5. Search for a video in yahoo video and you will get resutls from all major video hosting websites (more than 20!) including veoh, youtube, google video. But that is not the case with Google Video or Youtube

6. Yahoo Answers has become the second best source of user generated content on web after wikipedia. It was launched way after google's now dead service, google answers, was launched.

7. Try Yahoo!'s one search on mobile phones and compare it with Google results. You will see the difference.

8. I make phone calls using Yahoo messenger which I can't with google talk. And yes Yahoo messenger is 100 times better than GTalk.

Apart from this all I had experience with customer care of both companies. My friends all email IDs got hacked (including yahoo and Gmail)

Yahoo got recovered in 15 minutes by talking to customer care.

Google deleted the account.

I know Yahoo is going under hard time but it really has lot more than just a search engine...