They also have completely different markets, and I'm annoyed by the number of times I see the Google search page trotted out as an example of what people want. Most of the users I deal with on a daily basis have their homepage set to either their Yahoo page, or their msn page, or something similar.

I don't think I've yet to sit down at a user's computer and find their homepage set to Google's search page.

Unless, of course, they installed Firefox and then forgot it was there.

Well, there's me. I don't want to wait for junk to load - I'm not a stim-junkie. Also, consumer computers ship with Yahoo or MSN set as default, most defaults never get changed. So no actual info about user preferences there.

Then understand that you're not the average surfer. The problem with web geeks (especially UI web geeks) is that they presume their love for cleanness and elegance is a universal desire for all web users - this is simply not true.

Obviously I can't share any proprietary data here with you - but I work for a company that runs one of the largest sites anywhere - and our UI is kind of ugly, and definitely very busy. It is also the optimal UI - and we have teams of people relentlessly testing alternatives day in and day out. There's designing to your own aesthetic, then there's designing by user input, then there's designing by real live data from tens of millions of people.

What about all the people that aren't coming there? Perhaps your technique is an adaptive algorithm that learns to keep people who are already there, or something like that.