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When I've had my friends take the Bing It On challenge and polled them on the results, they usually prefer Google by about a 2:1 margin, pretty close to what Freakonomics found.

It's great advertising for Google.

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Are your friends people like you? Which engine do you like? Is it possible that maybe your friends aren't a representative sample of the average searcher?

(Note: I work for Bing.)

I'm referring to my college friends. I work for Google, and my Googler friends are understandably biased; I don't include them in this sample. But I also went to a liberal arts college, and my friends there are fairly representative of educated young people in non-technical fields, and the same 2:1 ratio in favor of Google seemed to show up.

I went to a liberal arts college (Swarthmore) and I have to say: there is no way my friends are representative of the average American. grins Only one in four adult Americans has a college degree. Average income: 30K. Building search that appeals just to my friends is not my, or Bing's, mission.

(Note: I work for Bing.)

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