balam - 4:20 pm on Aug 14, 2007 (gmt 0)

EFV,

> Sounds like an apples-to-oranges comparison

Really? Both Google & Yahoo offer web/image/video/audio search, maps, email, video, shopping... Or are you discounting this survey (and therefore by extention, all survey work by the ACSI folk and all the Organizational Users of their Data Modelling Services) because they didn't ask Juan Q. Public who has the better SE algorithm, Yahoo or Google? Because they didn't ask which is better, a Philips #123 DVD player or a Sony #ABC DVD player? A BMW sports coupe or a Ford SUV?

What you want are product reviews (of which finding ones that put Google in a glowing light are no trouble) and not Customer Satisfaction surveys.

If Juan goes to Yahoo, does a search and finds what he wants, I would argue that Juan is satisfied. Sure, Google may have a better algorithm and may have offered better results, but that isn't going to change the fact that Juan was satisfied with Yahoo. Neither is the opinion that some of us hold, that Juan is an idiot just for using Yahoo.

<vaguely trolling?>
Google is evolving from a one-trick pony into a dinosaur. Updates to their core product seem more to degrade than enhance. Innovations come across as a(nother) vehicle for pounding ads into our heads. Their homepage is an albatross.

For a company that has introduced so many new products and made so many changes, it may be surprising that its homepage has changed so little. It is almost the same as it was in the 1990s. Some users say it looks stale compared to Ask.com, which has a very different display of search results. Visual presentation may well be a factor behind the falling Google scores, as some users compare the look of Google to Ask.com.

- Professor Claes Fornell, in his commentary on the survey results [theacsi.org].

While Google's search functions remain strong, when it comes to the Web, customers look for marked improvements from year to year to say they are more satisfied, he said. "For the average consumer, what you see with Google is what you saw three years ago," Freed told Reuters.

- From the linked article in the first post
</vaguely trolling?>

> They are judging their experience on a very different set of criteria than are most of the readers of WebmasterWorld

And the critical thinkers shall arise from the morass of sycophants and knee-jerk reactors...