Back on 12/11, I mentioned that I was on a quest to find a new default search engine. For one week each, I was going to try Yahoo, MSN, and Ask. This past week was Ask's turn. All in all, it fared pretty well, with only a few disappointments. It didn't however, do well enough to supplant Yahoo in my tests, so Yahoo is the big winner for me. From now on, I will be using Yahoo as my default search engine, and I will alternate between using Ask, MSN, and Google whenever Yahoo fails to provide what I am looking for.
So, why did I head down this path? Google's unstable results and constant changes frustrated me enough to want to switch. If none of the other search engines had satisfied my searching needs, I would have had no choice but to stick with Google. But I felt that I'd never given the others a fair chance at winning me over. Each of them had always been my substitute search engines, but I'd never searched exclusively with any of them. My gut told me that one of them was likely going to satisfy my needs, if I just gave them a chance. As usual, my gut was right.
So here's to you, Yahoo! You are now my #1 search engine. (Just keep in mind that the next time I'm dissatisfied, I won't hesitate to try out others).