Information workers are relying more and more on Google and less on competitors Yahoo and MSN, writes MediaPost, citing a report from Outsell, Inc. In February, Google was the preferred search engine for 74 percent of information workers, up from 64 percent in January 2005. The proportion of corporate users who preferred Google increased from 65 to 75 percent.

In the government sector, those preferring Google increased from 61 to 76 percent, and in academia 68 to 78 percent. In healthcare, the increase was from 62 to 68 percent. Google's gains were the result of Yahoo and MSN losses, with Yahoo's overall share shrinking from 18 to 15 percent, and MSN's from 9 to 7 percent.

However, in part because of an increase in irrelevant search results - from 28 percent of total searches to 30 percent - workers are spending more time on "information tasks." The total time across the three industries increased from an average 10.9 hours a week to 12.0, with healthcare search time increasing most, from 8.1 to 10.0 hours.