Slightly off-topic, but:

"It's like Coke vs. Pepsi, they taste 99% alike and blind tests show costumers have no preference on one over another."

Sorry, but that's completely wrong. Pepsi is far sweeter. It wins on taste tests, whilst Coke wins in some tests where people drink an entire can.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cola_wars

I stand corrected, thanks for the Cola war insight :)

I guess I let out my own personal taste and bias and some faulty memory...

Not faulty memory just accepting a common myth/advertising. It wasn't until recently that I was informed of the truth of why the pepsi/coke taste test works out the way it does.

;) I actually can't stand the taste of Coke, but love Pepsi with a passion. Some people think I'm weird/being petty, but it's just a different taste.

(Reply to Zack who's comment is dead):

You can tell even by the smell. Perhaps you think I'm lying, but when served a brown fizzy drink in a cup, I can tell with 100% accuracy wether it is Coke, Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, or Pepsi Max.

I don't know exactly why but that sounds very funny to me. I would boast of this ability all the time.

The long winter evenings of blind taste testing at our house simply fly by ;)

Yep, I have this ability too - I thought I was the only one!

I like Coke more because Pepsi is too sweet for me.

"I've seen studies where the researchers show Yahoo results on Google's template, and vice-versa, and people still thought that Google had better results."

Just to clarify, I suppose you mean people thought the Google site with the Yahoo results was better than the Yahoo site with the Google results?

Yes, that's exactly what I mean. Yahoo search results on a Google webpage were considered more relevant than Google search results on the Yahoo webpage!

Google is a brand. Some people automatically think it's better.

I checked this out, searching for nytimes.com with yahoo google and Microsft. The results were mostly the same.

All sets of top ten results were from nytimes.com. The layout was almost the same, in fact it looked like Google and Yahoo were based on the same template. The speeds for yahoo and google were basically the same. Microsoft seemed a tiny bit slower, but they didn't mention the actual speed of the search, so I don't know for sure. The number of results were different. Microsoft had 1.8million, Google had 32million, and Yahoo had 59 million. Google had a mini search bar under the first result, nytimes.com, that let you search in the site. That feature is nice. Even though the sites are almost identical, I still preferred Google's results. The other sites seemed ugly.

I'm not sure why that is. It could be that I have used Google for awhile, and just gotten used to their format. Or, it could be that Google does more effective research on how users interact with the site.

For example, I remember seeing the video from Google tracking eye movements while searching. The eye movements were mainly focused on the top left corner of the search result. Yahoo's site design interfered with that eye movement. They have a giant red Yahoo in the top right corner. It stands out, and I think it is annoying and distracting.