MACLA Web Watch - Spring 2008

Google (www.google.co.uk). Google has become the biggest of the top three since its launch in Sep 1999. This is my personal favourite, having a simple, clean interface with a myriad of features and options. The only advertising are context based textual ads on the results page.

Microsoft's Live Search (www.live.com) is almost an exact replica of the Google page. Microsoft, with Live Search, sought to mimic Google's overwhelming success and in September 2006 launched Live Search to replace MSN search and have adopted Google's look and feel. It lacks the ability to filter searches only on UK sites. Whether Microsoft can capture some of Google's market share is questionable.

Yahoo Search (search.yahoo.com) is the search interface for a company that has been a key player in the web browsing arena and its web portal at www.yahoo.com was a firm favourite as the starting point for users for many years. It too has adopted the Google look and feel to its search interface but has used its experience to add several unique features to its search engine.

As a comparison entering the word 'Metheringham' into each of the search engines gives the following results:

• Google - 122,000 results returned


• Live Search - 134,000 results


• Yahoo - 219,000 results.

Of interest, the search results do not return anything like this number or so results. In fact only the 1st 1000 results in any search query are accessible.

Whichever one you choose to use regularly will come down to personal choice as a result of sampling the different search engines. You do not have to accept the default search engine that comes with your browser. Experiment with the different search engine options until you find one you are comfortable with.

Finally. at the time of writing Microsoft have started a takeover bid for Yahoo, involving tens of billions of dollars, which Yahoo have initially rejected. We await the outcome of this battle with interest.