When I switched to Google, the improvement over Yahoo felt modest (for the searches I was making). Barely enough to change my bookmarks.
I found the difference remarkable and spectacular.
Did the two of you switch at different times? (If so, that might give some information about how long it would have taken for someone else to improve as much as Google did—though they might have improved slower with less competitive pressure.)
I started using Google in early 1999, when it still had “Stanford search” on the front.
At one point, Yahoo was actually using Google to create its searchable index.
When did you switch? (See my reply to David_Gerard for why I’m asking.)
Hmm. I’m pretty sure it was late 1999.
I think it’s more likely that my searches were either really easy or nearly impossible, so the difference in performance didn’t stand out.
Oh well. Another beautiful hypothesis slain by an ugly fact. So it goes.
When I switched to Google, the improvement over Yahoo felt modest (for the searches I was making). Barely enough to change my bookmarks.
I found the difference remarkable and spectacular.
Did the two of you switch at different times? (If so, that might give some information about how long it would have taken for someone else to improve as much as Google did—though they might have improved slower with less competitive pressure.)
I started using Google in early 1999, when it still had “Stanford search” on the front.
At one point, Yahoo was actually using Google to create its searchable index.
When did you switch? (See my reply to David_Gerard for why I’m asking.)
Hmm. I’m pretty sure it was late 1999.
I think it’s more likely that my searches were either really easy or nearly impossible, so the difference in performance didn’t stand out.
Oh well. Another beautiful hypothesis slain by an ugly fact. So it goes.