Thousands of posts, news articles and analysis pieces have covered the central topic of battling Google's dominance in web search, but I've seen very few that have discussed what is, in my opinion, the most telling example of the search giant's dominance. The latest (made popular across Techmeme and many individual blogs) was this piece from C|Net's Don Reisinger:
In an interview last year with a Google representative on my podcast, the CNET Digital Home Podcast, I was told that the key to Google's success, and more importantly, a key component in its corporate culture, is its willingness and desire to get search users going to the destination site as quickly as possible. He said that Google recognizes itself as a "middleman" and getting users to its intended site quickly is paramount if it wants to be successful...
...Google's tallest barrier to entry in the search engine market is its advertising platform, which is the world's largest. By expanding its search, it's able to create a more enticing advertising platform through AdWords, AdSense, and its embeddable Google Search box.
I disagree. I don't think Google's dominance is owed to their willingness to "get users where they're going," their advertising platform, the quality of their search results, their partnership network or the billions in capital. It's the results of a simple test...
In this test, subjects were asked which search results they preferred for a wide variety of queries - long tail searches, top-of-mind searches, topics about which their emotions ranged from great passion to total agnosticism. They were shown two sets of search results and asked which they prefer.
Lots of tests like this have been run with all sorts of differentiations. In some, the brands are removed so users only see the links. Testers do this to get an idea of whether they can win from a pure "quality" standpoint. In others, the brands remain to get an unvarnished, more "real-world" view. And in one particular experiment - performed many times by many different organizations - the results are swapped across the brands to test whether brand loyalty and brand preference is stronger than qualitative analysis in consumers.
It's this last test that has the most intriguing results (at least, in my opinion). Because in virtually every instance where qualitative differences weren't glaringly obvious, Google was picked as the best "search engine" without regard for the results themselves:
Fundamentally, testers find (again and again) that the brand preference for Google outweighs the logical consideration of the search results quality. The problem is, we run up against a situation like this:
If Microsoft or Yahoo! or a start up search engine wants to take market share, they're going to have to think less like a technology company trying to build a better mousetrap and more like a brand trying to win mind share from a beloved competitor. How was it that Pepsi took share away from Coke? Or Toyota from Ford? I seem to recall that it took a lot longer than 10 years.
What do you think? Given this advantage, how can another search engine effectively compete?
"Given this advantage, how can another search engine effectively compete?"
They'll have to come up with a brand that first appeals, not to the masses, but rather - to the linkerati, the bloggers of the world. A product that is too good and too cool to resist (i.e. firefox vs internet explorer). Then more of the masses will follow.
They'll need an ad campaign element that significantly surpasses adsense in terms of payout.
It won't be a Microsoft or Yahoo, because there's just too much embedded dislike and/or lack of coolness.
That said, I do think the day will come when a search engine & product comes along that quickly grabs market share away from google to the tune of 15-20%. The question is whether or not they'll be able to keep and to build on that initial momentum the way Mozilla did with Firefox.
People like change. As much as they love brands - they also tire of them. Right product, right place, right time. All the moons need to align.
I completely agree. Powerset was initially a supercool, experimental, linguistically minded search engine that was sending out beta invites, and looked to be able to be the Firefox of search engines. And then they got bought by Microsoft, and now it's a way to search Wikipedia, which is kind of cool...I guess...meh
It won't be long before someone CAN make that cool factor work and use it to garner significant market share.
I wonder how many people use Google without even realizing there are alternatives. Probably the same people who go to Yahoo and search for Google...
Definetely agree with Sean M.. Just think few years back, before Google. People use to love Yahoo!, although you had other search engines around too. It was more on the branding, coolness and the name. Google will remain at the first position for a while, but might become less cool, and people will drop it for a newer brand/search engine.
You mentionned the best example with Frirefox vs Explorer. It did take a while, but now more than 25% use it worldwide.
People like changes, and what's cool today, won't be tomorrow..
That's an interesting question Rand.
I would add a counterweight to your argument - that IMO google got to this position as being loved by all precisely because (for the most part) for the quality of their results. If those results started slipping and getting less useful, users would eventually take note, lose their brand loyalty and start sniffing around for other search engines to use. Although this would take a while to trickle down, users' loyalty to Google isn't iron clad.
But I haven't seen any significant evidence of their results getting worse.
However I do agree that their dominance would have an Internet Explorer effect if their product was ever to become clearly inferior.
Could you provide more details of the user test studies you refer to? And any examples of where you think Google's results are poorer quality than Yahoo's?
By timely coincidence my boss at Fresh Egg just wrote a post today about what might topple Google in the next few years, pointing out that the orignial PageRank license is held in Stanford Uni's name and is due to expire in 2011... could this ever be allowed to fall into a competitor/startup's hands? And would this even pose a threat to Google nowadays anyway? Be interesting to know Mozzers' thoughts...
I don't totally agree with your article.
At least from a european point of view, google search results are really better than yahoo's ones in French or in German.
Yahoo or MS Live are full of spam because they can't manage non english web sites easily.
PS: In France, Cocoa Cola is far away in term of market shares, I didn't see a bar offering Pepsi since years....
And even Google has significant room for improvement when it comes to non-English results. I find a lot of dark gray methods have a significant shelf life compared to their English counterparts.
Fairly obivous link farms, link spam, keyword stuffing and things that wouldn't last more than a week in English results seem to stick for up to 6 months if done in French, German, Portuguese, etc.
I'd imagine language is a part of Google's algorithm, and I can't help but wonder if something gets lost in translation. But, as you mentioned, Yahoo and MSN are 100x worse.
In terms of search, I think the next Google will probably not come from an English speaking market. It will likely be a Yandex expanding to cover some Eastern European countries, or a Baidu going after some other Asian markets. But the fundamental of the brand will still be built on providing the best search experience.
If I may, I think you are missing the main point being made here.
It isn't that Google does or does not have the best quality in their SERPS. The point is regardless of SERP quality, Google's brand equity is so far beyond that of the others its going to take more than building quality SERPS. Its going to take traditional brand building and reputation management to gain trust and market share.
Rand, I think CNET is actually spot on - more than you may know :)
Lets go back in time ...I am one of the few SEO's that actually used to manage a large search engine - the largest in Scandinavia at the time.
As many other search engines back then we where a "portal" - so search was just one part of the business. A huge part of the traffic but a small part of the revenues.
One of the major conflicts I found in this work and a constant struggle was the fact that I, as the manager of search, wanted users to leave our site as fast as possible (that was the benchmark I set) - but the rest of the portal group wanted to keep the users on the site.
When Google came around they beat us - and one important reason in my mind is that they did not have this conflict. They just had one goal: Help people find what they are looking for and send them there.
i agree that there's a tension inherent in the business models of portal vs pure search.
but google is becoming more portal-like. we're seeing a very concerted push by google to keep users in their own environment - disproportional ranking of YouTube videos in Universal Search, embedding YouTube and Google Video directly into the SERP, creating Knol as a publishing channel, allowing a "search thissite.com" search box underneath a site's own listing in google's SERP, pages of google's own movie listings, etc.
so if the "send them away as fast as possible" model always wins, another engine would just have to do that more efficiently than google. but that's not what's happening. google continues to gain share, despite metastisizing in every direction and evidently wanting to keep people on google properties more than ever.
the reason people don't mind is because they've come to associate the google brand with quality search, and now, quality web services. whether or google's quality is always the best is no longer the issue, since the weight of the brand makes people default to "google = good search."
Mikkel - I'm not suggesting that Google won on something other than quality of results (or any of these other items). I'm saying that today - in order to beat them, you can't just be better. Brand preference is such that now, you need to be "perceived" better than Google, not just outdo them in quality.
A few more follow-ups addressing some items in the comments:
Probably should have included this in the post last night - sorry about that!
The problem here (I think) is that we are discussing two seperate questions:
1) How did Google BECOME dominant?
2) How would it be possible for another product to OVERCOME said dominance?
Personally, I think these are the answers:
1) I don't think there's any question that Google became dominant because of the superiority of their seearch results. When Google came out, it was as if they were a "car" and Yahoo and Microsoft were the "bicycle" (you know, the one with the giant wheel in front, and the tiny one in the back? :)); which one are you going to take to the store a mile down the road if you have a choice?
2) Since then, Microsoft, Yahoo and others have been working overtime to try to catch-up to Google. There are two problems: Firstly, hey are STILL inferior, and secondly, as discussed here, Google's brand is enourmously powerful at this point.
Personally, I doubt that most people prefer Yahoo SERP's over Google's. There may come a time where this is the case, but someone else said it best: "It's Google's game to lose."
Google has the advantage, they have the lead, they have the mindshare, they have the revenue - they will only be toppled if they lose sight of the core concepts that made them so great in the first place.
We may be seeing the beginnings of this, as many have discussed; if Google does not retain their objectivity and continues to try to build their empire/monopoly by unfairly promoting other modules of theirs (Youtube), then they will start to feel the backlash when/if it gets out of hand.
But which came first, the chicken or the egg? ARE they unfairly promoting Youtube, as an example? Or did they purchase Youtube with the foresight that users want to see video first and foremost? I would argue the latter. As long as most people want to see video results as much or more as regular results, Google will be giving people what they want - which is what Google wants.
I feel like we're ganging up on you today, so please modify all of my other comments to reflect this new data :)
I think I'm beginning to get defensive about this topic because of the huge number of people who, now that Google is the 800-lb. Gorilla, don't want to give them any credit for doing things right (or, at least, having done them right in the past). Of course, that wasn't your meaning. I do think, though, that Google's branding, and the strength of that, are a very different animal than many big brands (especially here in the U.S.).
I thought a previous commenter made a great point about switching costs. Even if a competitor produces results just as good or up to 5% better than Google, most of us won't switch, and a lot of that isn't because of branding. Switching has a real cost (large-scale IT folks even calculate it), and "just as good" isn't going to cut it. This makes life a whole lot harder for Microsoft and Yahoo.
Keep in mind that most of you are speaking from your own experience, that is, savvy internet marketers who are aware of most of the alternatives. Google's search business isn't directed at you; you are not their bread and butter in this respect (though in adwords, adsense, etc. you certainly are).
What this brand awareness demonstrates is how important the brand has become to the average person, of whom there are far more than internet marketers. It's the aggregate, hard to predict behavior of these people that have put Google on top. Google's ubiquity is hard to deny, but I think the question was can that process be duplicated? And without a major revolution in how search works, I don't think it can. Google emerged just as a huge number of english-speaking people were getting onto the internet, and while that growth is still impressive it is slowing, especially among the english speaking category. The preference has been set, and can even be likened to Microsoft's install base (though obviously far easier to change). The market isn't open any more; any business that tries to reach Googley heights will have to do so at the expense of Google itself, which obviously just wasn't the case back in 2000.
The survey itself is interesting though because it implies than people prefer Google even in the absence of better results. But it's also very hard to quantify "better" in these cases, and to most people (casual users) better probably means "more like Google". So not only does Google have the brand awareness, but sort of own the measuring stick as well.
That said, I would love to rock it old school and use altavista.digital.com again (which doesn't even resolve properly anymore, just boring old altavista.com now) just for nostalgia's sake.
I don't doubt the strength of the Google brand, but are brand and search quality really inseparable? In many ways, Google got the brand it did by providing search quality, giving us what we wanted, and developing some of the most incredible word-of-mouth ever. How many Google ads were their on TV, radio, etc. in the early days (even now)? Few to none that I can recall. Google made their name by providing a better product, and now they're able to capitalize on the power of that name.
There's been a lot of discussion about this lately, and I'm hardly a Google fan-boy, but personally, my original decision to use Google was based on quality. I was willing to try all sorts of engines, if they produced results. I remember using Northern Lights for a while, just because it seemed better. Google did the job well, and beating Google isn't going to happen just by matching their performance or improving it 1%. It's going to take a quantum leap in what search means, and I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that that leap isn't going to come from Yahoo or Microsoft.
I agree with you Pete. Certainly Google has a very strong brand, but it is important to keep in mind how they got there. They didn't put out a whole bunch of TV and radio and print ads to try to cram their brand down people's throats. They succeeded on word-of mouth. And 9 times out of 10, why does word of mouth work so well? It's because a company is doing such a good job at what they do, that it makes people want to tell their friends.
Agreed. Meanwhile, Yahoo advertised fairly aggressively, especially a couple of years ago, and it didn't change the game for them. The search engine wars aren't the Cola wars - billions in advertising may have convinced us to drink bubbly brown high-fructose acid water, but I'm not sure search is the same kind of beast. Of course, now that search is becoming more of a consumer product (and less the realm of just techies), that may change.
Google advertised aggressively -- they just did it where it counts (Dell PCs, Firefox, etc.), and Yahoo! did it where every other big brand has for decades (the tube).
Why pay lots of dollars for people to see your logo when you could pay a similar amount of money for people to see your logo ON your website the first time they open a web browser on their new computer?
I would have to disagree with the post. I prefer Google, even after continually doing simultaneous search comparisons with Live Search.
Live, at least, is missing some fundamental elements that make Google much more useful-- like defaulting to phrase matching.
While problems like that aren't necessarily the norm, they are common enough to drive the exact brand preference that testers have witnessed.
I don't think we disagree; my point wasn't that another search engine is better or higher quality, it's that no matter whether you have high or low quality results in Google, people will prefer it. What I'm saying is that Google could be worse than the competition (not that they are) and consumers would still prefer them.
it is called branding! they have created that "link" to the people, just like major brands do.
I'm with you Rand, and I think that makes sense if you observe only a few searches. Most of the time, results are quite comparable.
But over the long term, outliers start to show up. If you swapped Live results with Google's for life, I bet you people would end up switching to Live.
...once they heard about it at least.
good post about MSN not defaulting to phrase match! it's crazy that they wouldn't do something so obvious.
Google definately has a big advantage over its competitors...
I have heard some people say that they wish Google had a competitor because then it might smarten up in some areas. What do you think?
-Brenelz
Sorry Rand, I think you're wrong. I do grant that there's a remarkable brand, but I think there's more. There's a cost to taking the time to change, learning where things are on a new page, and Google's still serving better results and focusing more on the user. Now maybe a generation of searchers has been taught to look for things where Google's put them, but we're still looking for relevancy where Google put it.
As long as the other engines aren't providing as good or better results exactly where people are used to seeing it, and generally being better than Google as a user experience, people have no incentive to make the effort to change.
I can't say I agree on this one. Google's brand was built on being the best search engine. Best equalling easiest to use, fastest, most relevant.
It's not unfathomable that another company could do better than Google in these areas, but with Google so far ahead it's a challenge that would require significant capital and brainpower, in addition to brand development.
I still find Yahoo's results to be too cluttered, and not entirely relevant. I suspect that their ads can perform better (than AdWords) because they're often more relevant than the natural results. As a brand, they're probably on par with Google, but they're known as a portal - not a search engine. Yahoo search is closer to Cherry Coke. The main brand is ubiquitous, but this is just a variation on that brand moreso than an identifiably separate product.
MSN isn't too bad, but there's nothing that's so much better than Google that I'd change my search habits. I do think they've handled the MSN/Live branding horribly. I still don't know what the difference is between MSN search and Live search or whatever MSNLive combo they're using these days.
Finally, the biggest point I'd raise in contention is that Google's branding has in several cases only been beneficial in closely related products. Consider Froogle, which never gaines significant market share in product comparisson. Or Google Video which never saw the success of YouTube (or even DailyMotion or other competitiors). Or Google Answers which had the added incentive of payment, but couldn't overtake Yahoo Answers. None of those products were bad, but the surviving competitiors were better, and branding couldn't overcome that.
Damn straight, SEOfangirl. Couldn't have put it better meself.
And very good point about Google's other products not taking off despite their brand.
Oh yeah, and v true about MSN/Live - make your friggin minds up!
I think searchers can still be pretty fickle with their loyalties if their fave search engine starts suddenly dishing them crap. Once, its a bit annoying but you forget about it. Twice, you furrow your brow and start muttering curses. Three times, you start looking for a better search engine. Google or no google, if they start serving crap results their dominance will start to falter.
And they know this - which is why their search quality / antispam team works arguably harder than anyone elses.
I think the results on the tests speak for themselves - the brand is pretty damn powerful at the moment. The question in my mind (and I'm not a branding expert) is whether upstarts / other SEs should go after the Google brand or whether they should fight a different battle. Do people want something they love *more* than Google or something they feel about *differently* to Google?
Rand nice post! In the early days I do feel Google excelled because of several reasons:
1. Their results were more accurate and less susceptible to spam because of the introduction of a unique algorithm (Page Rank). AltaVista didn’t have this additional way of scoring sites and was venerable to spam attacks like doorway pages (good old days of webposition gold ;)). There were extreme examples where porn sites were utilising terms like ‘cars’ to pull in traffic. Google seemed to negate this type of spam – it became more difficult.
2. The simplicity. They didn’t cloud their purpose. They specialised in search and that’s what they did – they got you to where you wanted to go. They stuck to their guns as the others decided to become a portal – they were afraid of loosing their traffic and wanted to become ‘sticky’.
3. They were cool – everyone loved them! ;) They didn’t go down the DoubleClick route – they hung out for a way in which they could monitise their site without having to put unrelated banners over their lovely white space. Fortunately GoTo gave them the inspiration for on-topic paid text adds which seemed to go down well with their audience.
These are 3 broad reasons why the engine first succeeded (there were other reasons of course). It was down to accuracy, simplicity, speed, and die-hard search.I think it is because of these reasons that they are now trusted. You could mix up the results of Google and Yahoo and people would still trust Googles search results.
It would be extremely difficult for a new (or existing) search player to compete with the goodwill of Google and the overwhelming trust that has been built up over the years with Google and its customer. This was a company that didn’t spend money on advertising in the early year; press wanted to speak about them, the media wanted them to succeed. They grew virally through friends recommending this new search engine.
How could they be overtaken by anyone else? Well you never know! Check out my blog article I wrote this morning. Did you know that Page Rank is a licenced part of the Google algorithm that is owned by Stanford Uni? Could other search companies adopt Page Rank as part of their algorithm in the near future? Could this be something that would allow competitors to get closer to Google? Will there be another entrepreneur like Bill Gross to introduce another way of searching? Take a look and see what you think: https://blog.freshegg.com/the-real-google-bomb_605/
Here is another blog inspired by Rands post - my thoughts on the future of search and what it could mean to SEOs and search in general: https://blog.freshegg.com/the-future-of-seo-volume-one_637/
The biggest reasons why people visit a certain website is because they know it & have used it before. This is something really hard to beat.
If you think books, you probably think Amazon, & you will search first on Amazon, even if you know there are hundreds of other bookstores easy to find. It's only when you don't find that book on Amazon, that you'll start searching for that book on an other site. If you find it there, & the experience is better then on Amazon, then you might consider going there first next time you search for a book.
The same counts for Search Engines. Most people will only consider using an other search engine when Google didn't gave good results after 3-4 tries, and even then ... they'll probably blame themselves for not searching good enough, then to blame Google for not giving great results. When they think search, they think Google.It doesn't even matter for most people that Google would give less good results than for example Yahoo. Most people won't even do the effort to find it out.
Great post Rand. It's interesting because I've noticed in my 5 months down in the Bay Area that their is almost a religious belief that marketing and brand building are almost unnecessary if you have technological superiority. Betamax anyone?
Apart from the fact that probably both the quality of results and the brand have something to do with Google's overwhelming popularity, I actually tend to think that at this point in time convenience becomes a massive factor of attraction for users.
On grasshopper's comment that Google is becoming more portal-like and attempting to keep users within their own environment, I think they're not so much hindering their position by doing so, but they're consolidating it.
A lot of users are actually looking for youtube or news results; they love the movie listings, and live match scores, and instant measurement or currency conversions. Google has become a one-stop shop for all our information needs. And that, in my opinion makes it so formidable. People are lazy. They want to go to the supermarket and buy everything in one place.
It will be difficult for another search engine to compete against such an informational hub; but then again, I don't think it's impossible as long as they remember that Google is not a search engine but an information broker and this is how a potential competitor will have to position themselves.
this post is a clear evidence that the power of a well established brand is worth millions of top rankings on search. Be a known brand that has a link with people and people wont have to look for you on a search engine, they will simply type the name of the brand on the url box. Google has won the 'branding' challenge
Googles search is much more simple then some of the other major search engines. When you search in google, they have the search bar and basically nothing else. The process is simple. Where if you look at yahoo there is many more choices to choose from on their main page. For the average person who is just looking to find what they are searching for and be on their way, I could see why they would choose Google.
hi. unfortunately i dont agree with your article(partially). the reason behinde this is, i have found always good. there are so many other search engine which are famous also but there are so many problems in them like showing pages which are blocked or removed. they are showing searches with different languages also.
so i would be agreed if i will find any reason.
I'm just now catching up, but I agree with you and think that this is more about perception than anything else.
As I read this, a quote came to my mind from this post:
"To my mind, despite Yahoo! eeking out a win in the numbers here, Google is still the gold standard in search."
I must say that today Google is a great brand with great product quality.
So as Randy said someone needs to be extraodinary be beat it.you cant just come with a better product. We all trust google and its very difficult for us to change that perception as in a day we use google 100 times and most of the times our queries are solved or answered.
I'm glad you mentioned Pepsi, because they are a perfect example in this economic climate. Pepsi made its move on Coke during the Great Depression, doubling its profits from 1936 to 1938. They did this primarily by offering twice as much cola for the same price (a 12 oz. Pepsi was sold for 5 cents, while Coke was sold at 5 cents for 6 oz.)
Its a lesson worth remembering: in a down economy consumers are more likely to look beyond the big brand to find value.
Yahoo and Microsoft should use this recession to lure advertisers away from Google by emphasizing their value. And although its harder to lure users of a "free" product such as search, Live's CashBack is at least thinking in the right direction.
"If Microsoft or Yahoo! or a start up search engine wants to take market share, they're going to have to think less like a technology company trying to build a better mousetrap and more like a brand trying to win mind share from a beloved competitor."
Ok I agree with you, the MSN brand actually close to software. Yahoo brand is email provider and Google brand is search, nothing more, that's why people call "Google it" for the term "search it", . because their only focus is "Search"
Why people like Searching at Google?, because it Fast , Clean (no banner ad.
So,
MSN = Software
Yahoo = Email Provider (how many people use [email protected] for their email)
Google = Search
Just found this article after all this time.
Indeed, the Google name and search engines is analagous Jello and gelatin.
It is what it is. All we can hope for is Google does right by all its webmasters who write legitimate content (no black hat techniques).
Thanks for the article.
Surely though Search needs that sort of brand loyalty, because of the speed issue, if I want to get to a site I want to search and go, not search site a, search site b, search site c, aggregate and compare results, go back to site b, and click through to the site I want from there.
If you want your car fixed you don't go to 3 garages, get them all to do the repair, chose which one did the best job and pay them, you go on past experience, did they get my car fixed last time I was there? on recommendations, do other people think they do a good job at fixing cars? and ease of accessability, can they fit me in when I want to be seen?
Similarly, over years of experience, recommendations from friends, and the ease oif access of the Google search box, people have learnt that Google is more consistantly able to give them the results they want, why would they even bother to compare anyone else against that. Unless someone can offer something to make the experinece not just equal, but better, after all you wouldn't stop using a great garage unless you were sure the competition were going to do a better job, not just an equal one.
Rand, could you link to some of that research? I'd like to take a look and see if and how much attention they paid to 'the search experience' of people tested. After all evaluation of results really counts when using your own search terms, motivated by your own intent.
I've always said that over the past few years google has shifted to having the dole objective of dominating above the fold content on its search. universal search is a direct result of this.
...will in the next few years (or less) be the only things viewable above the fold on page 1 of a search
Google is 100% self serving, the customer comes a distant second (or 3rd if you include advertisors)
Personally i long for the return of 'classic' google or something akin to the altavista of 1999 which focused on getting people to pages
I agree with you - the public is way too obsessed with Google's image and brand name. I hear about it every day. In my opinion, I do find Google's results to be better when you know exactly what you're looking for. However, I do remember back when I switched from Yahoo to Google, it wasn't then because of the difference in results, it was because my friends were telling me "Google is better - use Google!!!".
~ Long Island Insurance
The most best thing Google did in the beginning was the layout of their page - simple, clean, easy to read. It sounds simplistic, but that was a brilliant move. The average user out there can't handle too much clutter, too much information being presented to them.
Google made it easy and unintimidating.
-Jesse
Personally, I would agree with CNET, on the basis that Google were the first (I could be wrong) to take measurements to help improve their index with tools such as the Webmasters Console, Analytics, Base, Maps etc....
All of the tools mentioned above not only help webmasters improve their validity with Google, they ultimately help improve the user experience to return the most relevant results first in the quickest time possible.
Comparing the search engines visually, I find both Yahoo and MSN seem to have busy results pages (MSN less so), I often get distracted towards the footer of the results pages with Yahoo (lists ppc results near the paged display).
This debate could be favourable on either side, I suppose it depends on which search engine your use to and what level of internet experience a user has.
Although users don't care about results and only care about the brand there is a reason that is the case. Google has been giving users FAST results for years in which time a conscious trust has been built up. I can typically go to Google and find what I need in about 8 seconds and I have been doing this for years. For me it simply doesn't feel right to use Yahoo or Live (regardless of that fact that they are slower and don't look as good).
Yes it's all about brand, but to build brand you must provide a quality service in the first place, which Google does better then YH and MSN (imo).
I have been leaving my search bar on MSN, and I keep trying to use alternative search engines but keep coming back to Google.
I think that I might create a "Random" search in the Search Providers box which will randomly select from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask (any others I should try?) I hate to say it but Google does usually win!
I think its a bad state of affairs when Google has this dominance and power in the market. Anything that can be done to bring the power back to 'the people' or some independant body would be fantastic.
Intereting though that Google is percieved as being "more right" and people buy into the Google is good "kool aid".
Google came to the market with the USP of returning results in lightning speed; thanks to the data centre concept.
As other Search Engines strived to catched-up, Google became increasingly popular and was again smartest in their ability to fight spam and still be accurate and fastest.
As wealth came in, Google had Adsense and the money to increase their network to generate even more money. Some good and some bad acquisations.
Now rich user expericence and wide diversified presence gives birth to brand loyality.
Google's ability to innovate, farshightedness and planned expansion makes them - unbeatable...? well, almost!
When I sneeze ... I grab a Kleenex, not a tissue.
When I search ... I go to Google!
Google earned this top position and short of a major scandal, they will always be the top dog.