Why Google won

I firmly believe that Google rose and dominated the search engine market not necessarily because it provided better search results, but because it was the search engine that provided the simplest, cleanest, and most accessible user interface. I bring this up because I caught this image on reddit (my new addiction) the other day. Here’s a cropped piece of the image,

google vs. yahoo

Oddly enough, while many search engines have now adopted a Google-esque simplicity to their interfaces (Live Search, AltaVista, Ask.com, etc.), Yahoo seems to have taken the opposite approach, saturating their homepage with more content – news, top searches, weather, links to other Yahoo services, and a sickening amount of ads. I highly doubt this “everything and the kitchen sink” strategy will put Yahoo back on top.