i experience the war between these titans personally as i make decisions on which services to use online.
following are the key services i am using online, and a bit of rationale behind the decisions that got me there.
email: gmail has taken over as my primary personal email from yahoo. my first personal email was hotmail. i moved to yahoo because it had a better user experience.
i moved to gmail a few months ago, because i thought the yahoo user interface became too clattered and slow. they also did a poor job in filtering spam.
instant messaging: skype and gtalk are the only IM services i am using now. i stopped using MSN and Yahoo! messenger.
i started to use IM with ICQ. when it became too much off a bloatware i moved to Yahoo and MSN (and Odigo too, but this is a different story). i settled on skype and gtalk because of their simplicity and voice quality.
photo sharing: after a long affair with imagestation from sony, i moved to flickr (bought by yahoo). what got me to move to flickr was the richness of the features to edit and organize, with what i think (but my wife and other disagree) is a simple interface for viewing the pictures.
search: i use google. and i haven’t tried microsoft or yahoo search engines recently. i guess they’ll have to do something really different and innovative to get me to switch (or google could do something to hurt the user experience).
reading blogs: i used to get my fix through my yahoo!, but last week i officially switched to google reader. i wanted a better way to manage my feeds, and i thought google reader is a better choice (even though it can use a lot of improvement).
i hated the fact that i had to find a trick in order to get my OPML file from my yahoo, so i can import it into google reader.
finance: one of the last things i still use yahoo! for. google finance is playing catch up and is not there, yet.
maps: started like everyone else with mapquest, moved to yahoo. and now am an avid google maps fan. especially after i found out they have a mobile client for my blackberry.
blogging: i use wordpress to power my blog, and windows live writer to publish posts. i guess this the only online related microsoft tool i am using. which also happens to be a downloadable client rather than a web service… i guess that says a lot about microsoft’s internet play so far
so to summarize:
it is seems that there is a clear trend that more than new services win me over, it is services that i currently use that cause me to switch and look for alternatives. this happens when they “upgrade” and “improve” their product to a point where i no longer find it useful.
google is currently winning the war for my personal online usage. yahoo is on a steep decline, and microsoft are showing some signs that they may still have a play.
interestingly enough this same phenomenon can be traced in the stock price of these companies. i guess the common wisdom that you should buy (stock) of companies that make stuff you use and like, is a common wisdom that i should actually follow.
