Yahoo: Google “Lacking In Usability”

February 28, 2007

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The head of Yahoo’s real-time communications thinks the low adoption of Google’s products beyond search and Maps is rooted in that company’s engineering culture.

Yahoo: Google "Lacking In Usability"

Yahoo: Google “Lacking In Usability”

Without a focus on usability, products have little chance of moving beyond a small group of high-tech users to reach a broader audience.

Yahoo’s Jeff Bonforte held court with reporters and dispensed his views of Google’s products versus those from his company.

Along with stating Google’s stuff lacks the usability of Yahoo’s services, he noted the “intimate connection in usability” Yahoo has with its users.

PC Magazine UK noted some figures from comScore, comparing usage of Yahoo’s email and instant messaging versus those from Google.

Yahoo has a big edge in email users, with 249 million. Gmail has picked up 60 million users.

On the IM side, Yahoo’s 77.9 million users are well ahead of Google Talk’s 3.4 million.

“In every application, we are number one or two,” Bonforte said.

He also called usability for the masses “the most difficult problem to solve on the Internet.”

While the hardcore tech geeks will try anything, the typical Internet user needs a good usability experience to go along with the functionality.

Andy Beal commented on Bonforte’s remarks, and pointed out something he found interesting about Bonforte and the Yahoo Messenger client he oversees:

Is this the same messenger product that tries to hijack your browser settings and change your default search engine to Yahoo? Well, I guess removing clear indications that Yahoo’s about to hijack your settings, is one way to “increase the time that users spend using them.”

Probably the most telling part of Bonforte’s remarks comes from the subject people picked up on the most.

As a Yahoo executive, his comments about Google received the most attention.

That says more about the gap between the two companies than anything else.