It's more complicated than just wanting Google

In the last six months or so I've seen several articles mentioning the fact that Yahoo is actually beating Google for user loyalty, preference or what not. Seems to go against the common notion that Google is the be all and end all of Internet access.

ClickZ, a search engine newsletter, has a recent article on the market for videos over the internet. In it they cite a report by Points North Group saying that

"Fifty-four percent of the group expressed interest in the Yahoo! Go service. Interest in Google Video trails Yahoo!'s service with 46 percent of the market."

Yahoo Go is their all-in-one suite of services for pc, mobile and video. So why is Yahoo ahead here? They say that

Yahoo!'s offerings have more market share in this situation because the portal has set itself up as more than a search engine.

So I'm wondering what this has to say about offering library services. Clearly portals are good (and thank goodness the library has a good start in that area--thank you, Elliot et al.)

But we're still stuck with the problem of presenting a complex search environment in a simple fashion. Federated searching is sort of helpful but it's not a silver bullet.