Rich People Use Google, Poor People Use Yahoo

That’s the result of a new study by a marketing firm, but I’m not sure I agree with them.
What the study found was that people who use Google have a great tendency to have spent $500 or more online. Yahoo users, on the other hand, tended to have spent less than $500 online. The problem, however, is that the amount of money spent online isn’t really a good way to measure personal wealth.
Take my father and I, for instance. He is much more affluent than I am by several orders of magnitude. He has a lot of disposable income available, I have very little. Yet when it comes to online shopping I’ve probably outspent him about 10 – 1. Why? Because I’m much more comfortable doing my shopping online than he is. When I’m looking for a particular product I’m much more likely to go to the internet than he is. It has nothing to do with our personal wealth and a lot to do with our age differences (I grew up with computers, he didn’t) and level of comfort with online shopping.
Granted, that reality doesn’t necessarily prove that Google users aren’t richer than Yahoo users, but it certainly throws a monkey wrench in the conclusions of this study.