Google

[d000hg]

It's the other side of the coin - they are a monopoly for users same as ze Windows.

No they're not. Changing from Windows is hard, you need to invest lots of time just installing a new OS let alone knowing how it works. You can try a new search engine just by typing it into your browser... you can even find it by typing the name into Google. Using Bing or whatever works very similar to Google.

[AtW]

Using Bing or whatever works very similar to Google.

It's like changing from Coke to Pepsi - impossible.

[NickFitz]

You can try a new search engine just by typing it into your browser... you can even find it by typing the name into Google.

Yahoo! handles many hundreds of thousands of searches for "Yahoo" every day.

Some people seem to find it easier to get to Yahoo! Mail or whatever by going to Yahoo! and searching for "Yahoo", even though the link to whatever service they are seeking was right there on the page they searched from. I have no doubt that many of those users get to Yahoo! to carry out that search by first searching for "Yahoo" on Google.

There was absolute mayhem back in February when ReadWriteWeb published an article that briefly became the first Google result for "facebook login"

Still, there's an important lesson there: you need to understand your users, and you are not your users.

[Sysman]

Yep, I did that straightaway as the search results were totally different to those I got before and it then 'destroyed' a number of my settings such as opening search results in a new window...

It started working here in Chocolate Land yesterday, and you don't need to be logged in. Typing a single "a" comes up with the likes of Apple and Amazon (3 flavours of), so my guess is that they are picking the big payers.

[Sysman]

HotBot and AltaVista.

Raves from the grave.

Altavista is still there

I couldn't resist putting in a search for FORTRAN...