SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google is almost everyone's favorite search engine, despite misgivings about data-collection and advertising practices that are widely seen as intrusive.
A survey of released Friday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found 83 percent of U.S. search engine users rated Google as their preferred search engine. That was up from 47 percent in 2004, the last time that Pew gauged people's attitudes about Internet search engines.
Yahoo's search engine ranked a distant second at 6 percent, according to the latest numbers, down from 26 percent in 2004.
Google Inc. has turned its dominant position in Internet search into a gold mine. The company's Internet search engine is the hub of an advertising system that generated $36.5 billion in revenue last year — up from $3 billion in 2004.
But the Pew findings also indicate Google may be risking its popularity by trying to learn more about users in a quest to sell more advertising.