According to a Friday-released analysis by industry tracker comScore, even though the Microsoft-Yahoo alliance appears to be a promising one, it might still be an uphill task for the partnering companies to overcome the steadfast loyalty of the countless Google users in the US!

Saying that Google enjoys the highest loyalty rate among US Internet users, comScore added that most users trust the California firm for a bulk of their online searches. Supporting its statement with statistical evidence, comScore said that, going by the June data, the Microsoft Bing and the Yahoo search engine users use these engines
32.6 percent of the time; with as many as 60.7 percent of them still using Google nonetheless.

Corroborating comScore's observation, Gord Hotchkiss, CEO of Enquiro Search Solutions, said: "The challenge facing Microsoft-Yahoo combined search offering is that choice of search engines is often a subconscious decision on the part of the user. For Microsoft-Yahoo to disrupt Google habit, they have to offer a compelling enough reason to do the cognitive heavy lifting required to break a subconscious habit."

Eli Goodman, comScore search evangelist, said that though Microsoft-Yahoo combined entity can offer formidable competition to Google in the US search marketplace, they still need to make their offering persuasive enough to impinge on loyal Google users - and convert the occasional Bing and Yahoo users into habitual visitors!