there is not much of a difference, the rules are mostly the same. the backlinks, the content and traffic etc. is the key for any search engines. but then, the paramerters will be slightly different. a google page rank 7 website which is not indexed in msn, will not help you in msn ranks. though it will be very rare for such a thing to happen!!
Well, in my opinion, google depends more on backlinks rather then yahoo and MSN. If you have backlinks from high PR sites(PR5 or 6) you have better chances to rank well in google.
well, the algorithms employed by all SE are protected with their LIVES. As such, there will be some differences in how various SE determine SERP. However, I wld think that by and large, the same parameters are used like backlinks, keywords, content and age. It is the weightage of each of these that are not so clearly defined for different SE's.
Based on my experiences; Google -> Relevant Inbound Links Yahoo -> Domain Age MSN -> Domain Name Anyone would like to share your thoughts?