As for search relevance, I don’t buy it. Sure, any competitor can hand pick a few queries where they’re clearly better than anyone else. And I can make note of the few queries where Yahoo completely falls down. But when you step back and look at the larger set of data, we’re on par with anyone else.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement (there always is) and it doesn’t mean that the UI has no effect on perception of relevance (it does). But the raw technology is better than most people give it credit for. But that seems to come out pretty well in the blind tests.

And the timing aside, it doesn’t change the fact that even if the execs had never said a word to begin with the underlying problem isn’t the focus. The search results aren’t as relevant. I’ve written about this before and pointed to specific examples to someone who said they were an engineer. After I laid the case out, I never heard another word and the issues I cited still remain many, many months later.

Don’t think I’m only picking on Yahoo, MSN is in the same boat. If Yahoo or MSN really wants to compete with Google — and I believe they do — then improve the search to the point that the differences are significant, not trounce out incentive plans.

In MSN’s case it is a wrong assumption…their goal is not necessarily to make the users switch search engines(where do they say that?), but to get more users to use theirs (see the difference?). By getting more users to use their engine they get more feedback, other data, etc. which ultimately will improve their engine. I believe they will unveil a much improved one in the Vista release time-frame or in the Windows Live launch marketing push.

Seriously, you’re falling into this trap: http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/004762.html

Or at least it feels that way. Do you really think the incentive program was thrown together in just a few weeks?

If so, you have a pretty lofy opinion of our ability to get a lot done quickly.