Yahoo got top marks in a J.D. Power online services satisfaction study for web mail and instant messaging, while Google topped the search satisfaction review.
Once upon a time, having an email account meant paying an ISP for one. That paradigm changed with the advent of Hotmail, which was subsequently purchased by Microsoft and is now part of MSN.
Today, 43 percent of Internet users have a web mail account as their primary place to receive email. J.D. Power and Associates surveyed 6,313 residential ISP customers for its 2005 Residential Online Service customer satisfaction Study.
Yahoo will be pleased with the results. Its Mail and Messenger services rated best atop the customer satisfaction Index Scores J.D. Power collected on web mail and instant messaging services.
In web mail, AOL Mail trailed Yahoo, and was followed by MSN Mail and MSN Hotmail. Google’s Gmail was ranked but not included due to an insufficient sample size. J.D. Power performs the study annually now and Gmail should make an appearance in the future.
Yahoo Messenger topped MSN Messenger and AIM in the instant messaging services portion of the study. Google Talk wasn’t included in the study’s results, likely due to its fairly recent debut.
Satisfaction with search engines and functions as shown by the study had Google atop its list. Surprisingly, Ask Jeeves ranked second; as a search engine it doesn’t have nearly the share of Yahoo, AOL, or MSN Search, but those who use it and responded to the study seem pretty happy with what they’ve found.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
