I just get the sense that Microsoft knows it needs Yahoo and Carol Bartz is more schrewd than Jerry Yang. As this market seems to get stronger it makes sense for Ballmer to make another bid at a little less than his original offer to save face with shareholders and Carol will be wise to take it as a huge premium to its current $13.47 stock price. The longer Microsoft waits the more they will pay if the market keeps rebounding. This deal gets done this weekend, my prediction.

I don’t think it’s about the ‘name’ as much as it’s the ‘algorithm’ implemented by the ‘big three’ in the search engine market.

For example, search for any keyword within the 3 engines and see how sometimes it’s totally different how the same page included in the results. Till now, google almost fetch the stuff and don’t forget about the PageRank; something that every webmaster care about!

Nobody is going to be able to catch Google as long as they continue to operate as they do today. Especially Microsoft. Google uses a lot of open source software (mostly Linux), and develops and contributes a LOT back to the open source community. Because of this, Google has been able to strengthen itself significantly over its competition. Microsoft is so closed-minded and tries to do things its own way, that I don’t see how they will ever be able to grow much more and even think about being a competitor in the future. Time will definitely show us. Thankfully Google recognizes the open source movement and is on board. Open source itself is making a big movement, which I document in more detail myself:

http://members.apex-internet.com/sa/windowslinux

As an SEO, I give top priority to Google always. Yes, Yahoo and MSN are important but my clients aren’t blasting me when their MSN rankings drop. But if they slide even a couple of spots on Google, the phone starts ringing. It’s just reality. Look at your analytics and you’ll quickly see your referral traffic sugar daddy is: Google.

Your journalism sucks

Who cares about this? Google is winning, blah, blah, blah. Do you know what kind of coffee you drink, and does it matter to you if they are the dominant player in the market?

I Still use google and if i can’t find what i’m looking for on the first page – guess what i look for it on page two – or i refine my search – it wouldn’t cross my mind to use yahoo or msn(live).

I don’t agree that google will be the number one daddy forever – remember they used to say that about yahoo only this century.

Does anyone learn anything from the past presidential election?
No, I am not talking politics here.
What set apart winning team from the others is consitency in the message and being in tune with the people’s need.

Google is about search and search only. They do not need to be the best. As long as I can find something closed to the solution I am looking for, a website easy to use that does not distract me from my goal then I will go for Google.

Yahoo is as good as Google but its website is so distracting you wonder what’s their main focus. Microsoft is yet to find its identity as far as the search engine is concerned.

Users do not have time to guess:
When I searching general information, I google it
If I am looking for movies and entertainement schedules I go to Yahoo.
Microsoft Live Search I still do not know how to do with that. The only times I end up there is when I am tricked to click a link from my hotmail account.

So until the other two contenders are clear about what service they are offering, the users will go to the strore proudly displying the OPEN FOR BUSINESS sign.

“Guest (WPN reader)” at 8:59 was closest to the mark. We’d relied first and foremost on Google for years for the same reason that they leapfrogged every other search engine / direstory on the web — their ability to spider entire pages in their index and return search results based on relevancy, especially to long-string search queries. But we’ve turned to MSN Live as our first resort since last fall, when Google’s algorithm tweaks began returning garbage results (and failing to return relevant results) based more on “popularity,” paid links, and SEO duplicity rather than relevance to the search query.

Aside from branding, MSN’s (and Yahoo’s) best bet to stop losing ground to Google is to focus on doing what once made Google great — returning relevant results, without churning up garbage results alongside or ahead of the relevant results. Google’s Image search, however, remains head and shoulders (and hips and knees) ahead of anyone else’s, if only for its streamlined format and ease of use.