Users Love Microsoft, Yahoo Search -- When It's Branded With A Google Logo

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).<p>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.

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.

'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.<p>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:<p>[3 liters in ounces] -- Google shows the answer, Live.com just miscellaneous results without the answer<p>[ambidesterous] -- Google shows correction, useful results and typo results; Live.com only random typo results<p>[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<p>[define:ambidextrous] -- Google provides a special list definitions culled from various sources; Live.com just normal results. (I use the 'define:' operator often.)<p>Why aren't MS and Yahoo at least aping these little easy-to-do things so that a switch is as painless as possible?<p>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.)

So on my main computer I've actually switched to Yahoo.<p>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.<p>Even with Yahoo's new interface it still seems messy relative to google.

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.

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.

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