Comparison of Working at the 3 Big Search Giants

castironwok writes "Finally, everything you've ever wanted to know about being an employee at Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. Tastyresearch describes his (or her) past few years interning and working at the three companies. Things I didn't know from before: Bill Gates wears old shoes, Google's internal security watches you like a hawk, the office styles of each company, and how to fill your suitcase with Google T-shirts. He calls the few select companies the 'prestigious internship circle', noting 'once you have worked at one, it's a lot easier to get into another'."

Re:big three?

[RichPowers]

Remember that MSN.com is the second most visited website. This will draw some search traffic.

Here's the breakdown:

Google - 43.7%
Yahoo - 28.8%
MSN - 12.8%

http://seo.zunch.com/search_engine_usage_statistic s.htm [zunch.com]

While MSN trails Yahoo and Google, it's still in the top three. Other websites rank the engines in the same order, but the percentages slightly vary.

I can name more than two...

[Anonymous Coward]

One of my sites receives approximately 2500 visitors from MSN searches each day. Mind you, Google tends to contribute upwards of 12000 every day, and Yahoo! about 4500.

Re:Interesting random fact

[nmb3000]

Considering that most 24" LCDs cost at least as much if not more than a pair of smaller ones, I wonder why they opted for less screen real estate

That is odd. At work we upgraded to dual 19" LCDs a few months ago and I can say there is a huge difference. I *feel* more productive because I spend less time bouncing between windows. I find it especially useful when coding, be it web or applications. You can have your code full on one screen, then the resulting webpage or documentation on the other. I think that a third monitor would be even better, having three full screens for different parts of a project. With one huge monitor you can't arrange windows as easily as you can with smaller monitors where you can just maximize the two or three windows you are working with. (An aside: if you have multiple monitors on Windows, you must try Ultramon [realtimesoft.com]. Worth every penny.)

I don't understand why anyone would want a 24" monitor for work. Watching movies maybe, but not the day-to-day stuff. Somebody who just started doing research at the university where I work got dual 24" LCDs with his new $8,000 workstation. For the cost of those two monitors he could have gotten three 20" LCDs, which would have given him more desktop space and (in my opinion) a much more useful setup. He just thought two 24" beasts sitting side by side would look frakking cool. He's right, but I still prefer multiple smaller monitors.

MSN Search is terrible.

[Kaenneth]

At my last contract job at MS, I really tried to use MSN search...

Sometimes the site wouldn't even load, sometimes clicking on search results would fail (because the click-tracking would fail), sometimes the main MSN site would show an server error. Each of these things were rare, but given how many things have to happen to complete a search task, overall I would estimate a 10% failure rate, to get any results at all.

Meanwhile, Google ALWAYS works. I have never once seen Google fail to load, or produce proper results. If Google doesn't load, I know it's my local network that's the problem.

Maybe it's the Parallel nature of Google's configuration vs. the apperently Serial setup of MSN. If a machine at Google fails, it dosn't affect much else, while one failure at MSN breaks the chain.

Re:Maybe a tamed, blind hawk?

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Or more likely, that security is so pervasive and commonplace in his life that they just remember him and only had to ask for his badge that first time. I know if I were assigning security I'd keep people in the same areas as much as possible for this reason exactly -- If security knows all the faces that should be there daily, theres much less room for 'unwanted guests' slipping through.

A Yahoo! employee explains the single 24" monitor

[nova_ostrich]

Most Yahoo! employees get laptops. Most laptops can only connect a single external display.

Re:big three?

[Kuciwalker]

Actually, Google isn't just one ad-sponsored website; it's a million ad-sponsored websites. Half the internet uses Adsense.

Re:all great places

[kaigeX]

I have no problem keeping the hours I want at Google, and have never felt pressured to stay later. The fact that so many people freely choose to work longer hours definitely has something to do with the perks, but my impression is that it isn't really that Google doesn't value balance.