Google, the god of internet search rose to popularity in 2001. The concept of link popularity and Page Rank provided Google massive success. How many other web sites and web pages link to a given page is taken into consideration with Page Rank, taking into consideration that good or desirable page are linked to more than others? This allowed Google to order its results by how many web sites link to each found page. Google's minimalist user interface was very popular with users, and has since spawned a number of imitators.

Yahoo! launched its own search engine in 2004 based on the combined technologies of its acquisitions and providing a service that gave pre-eminence to the Web search engine over the directory. In 2002, Yahoo! acquired Inktomi and in 2003, Yahoo! acquired Overture, which owned AlltheWeb and AltaVista.

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Microsoft

The most recent major search engine is MSN Search, owned by Microsoft, which previously relied on others for its search engine listings. In 2004 it launched a beta version of its own results, powered by its own web crawler (called msnbot). In early 2005 it started showing its own results live. This was barely noticed by average users unaware of where results come from, but was a huge development for many webmasters, who seek inclusion in the major search engines.

The other "true" search engines (those that provide their own results), like Gigablast, have vastly less market presence than the big three. However, since site usage is proprietary information, it is often difficult to determine which sites are most popular. MSN has launched the MSN AdCenter recently.

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Difference in Google, Yahoo, MSN
The three major search engines Google Yahoo and MSN have their own approach towards search. Google, owner of the leading online search engine, is devoted to a single-minded mission: transforming the way the world finds and stores information, even if that means sending people somewhere else whereas Yahoo, owner of the world's most popular Web site, is taking a more multidimensional approach as it strives to be all things for all people — a one-stop destination for recreation, work and research.

Google was one of the newer search engines, but it rapidly becomes the favorite.  In fact, the word is commonly used as a verb, a synonym for searching:  "I'm going to Google the web to find the info I need."  

Google is thorough and fast.  Its technology considers pages that are linked from many other sites to be more important than pages that only have a few links from other sites.  In other words, if many webmasters consider a website valuable enough to create a link to it, Google considers that a good reason to justify a high ranking for that site. Google is totally search engine.

Yahoo takes a more practical approach to technology, first identifying what people want and then building or buying a product designed to give visitors one less reason to leave its Web site — already the world's most popular online destination

The emphasis has pushed Yahoo into territory that Google hasn't treaded upon. The list of Yahoo services unavailable at Google include instant messaging, music, gaming, fantasy sports leagues, job placement, matchmaking and broadband service.

Google works by anchor text + link per domain. Yahoo works by anchor text + site wide linking (and link per domain). MSN works totally differently from the 2 master of the search on internet, MSN loves new websites! IF your website is new, you will get higher ranking on MSN. If its old and doesn't change its content much, you'll disappear from MSN search. Also creating inbound links gives the honor for your website to remain on MSN search with some nice SERPS if you did a good on-page SEO work.

Google and Yahoo put forward Off-page SEO in their algorithm, msn likes better the on-page SEO.

The difference is that Yahoo and MSN are true portals with all kinds of additional services.