Cleverness should be copied, Yahoo and MSN and Google!

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Although I’m in the growing crowd that suggests Yahoo and Google search results are comparable and MSN is not far behind, Google remains the leader in simple cleverness.

Why Yahoo and MSN don’t copy these little ideas from Google is a great mystery to me.
C’mon MSN, I don’t think many who search for “17 x 3” want this:
RAD Mfg. 2005 Application Chart & Pricelist
19×2.15 17×3.50,16.5×3.50 Front 17×4.25,17X4.50, 17×5.00 Rear CRF 250R 04-05 (36)Hex or Eagle 21×1.60 (32, 36)Hex or Eagle 18×2.15 19×2.15 17×3.50,16.5×3.50 Front

Yahoo you are no better with this:

Start Start 3 Portfolio – 17 x 22 x 1′ – PriceGrabber.com Open this result in new window

Find the lowest price on Start Start 3 Portfolio – 17 x 22 x 1′. PriceGrabber.com delivers instant bottom-line prices on millions of products from thousands of merchants

Google wins HANDILY with this:

  17 x 3 = 51

It’s hardly a copyrighted thing, so why don’t Yahoo and MSN do this?   Or the temp function of Google calculator where you type  “77 F in C”  to get the F to C temp conversion?

I actually think part of this stubborn foolishness is that competing company people get a sense of pride in the status quo and actually  stick to the wrong approach until they come up with something much better or they are forced by forces outside of their own control to copy the cleverness.

2 thoughts on “Cleverness should be copied, Yahoo and MSN and Google!”

  1. Google has a lot of these clever “shortcuts”, and very few of them seem to work on Yahoo, MSN or Ask. For example, Google has a handy currency conversion shortcut (“10 USD in CZK” gives the value of $10 in Czech Koruna).

    http://www.google.com/search?q=10+USD+in+CZK

    Although I tend to use Yahoo! as my primary search engine, I still go back to Google when I want to know how many pints in 3 liters, or how many square meters in an acre. It would seem fairly easy for YMA to implement these shortcuts, and I agree it’s a mystery as to why they don’t.

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  2. It makes sense to use different search tools for different tasks as you are doing. I’m guessing that unless somebody comes up with a killer anti spam application we’ll see a lot more vertical, edited search in the future and we’ll all learn to use diff searches for diff purposes.

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