Techie’s versus Non-techs… battle of Google versus Yahoo!

Saturday, February 16th, 2008 @ 5:10 pm | Web

So a friend of mine, and I were recently having a discussion over who uses Yahoo! after the recent bid by Microsoft. Our conversation consisted about how all of us use Google, and we were wondering who uses Yahoo!. Obviously somebody does because they enormous traffic.

Well he recently pointed me to this link, but I think that the data is flawed.

First: The data only shows circles, based on the number of people who have spent $500+. The size of the dots could be drastically different if, it classified people by the amount they spent online instead of the particular group they belonged to. For example, people that have spent $100, $200, $500, etc. Then you can come to the conclusion, that higher spending users use X search engine. There have been numerous studies that have shown that more affluent members of society click on less ads. So while ‘richer people’ may use google, they may click on less ads since they are more likely to be able to differentiate an ad from a search result.

Second: I think it boils down to technical versus non-technical. Yahoo! is a portal, it is not only a search engine but a news source, and a place to chat. Yahoo! provides content. Google doesn’t. I think the real story here folks, is that technical people want a search and use google. They have other sources for news, chat whether it be facebook, Reddit, Digg, Technorati or their news feed. Yahoo! is more of a jack of all trades, than the google search king.

Third: Based on my previous point, I believe Yahoo to be a gateway for new users. People who are just starting on the internet use Yahoo…why though? Well because as mentioned earlier, Yahoo provides content and for people who don’t know a plethora of websites, it is the good. It may even be the ‘internet’ for those users, but once they expand and their knowledge of the internet grows; I think the services that Yahoo provides are less of an incentive to use the site.