I have been pretty disturbed by the dominance of Google as a search engine for a pretty long while now. Just look at their nearest competitor!
TOP SEARCH SITES – AUGUST*
- . Google sites 37 billion searches
. Yahoo sites – 8.5 billionBaidu 3.2 billion
. Microsoft sites 2.1 billion
. NHN 2 billion
. eBay 1.3 billion
. Time Warner 1.2 billion
. Ask 743 million
. Fox 683 million
. Lycos 441 million
. Total worldwide searches: 61 billion
*Source: comScore
Well, since I have a couple of minutes to spare, I might as well just post my two cents worth.
I agree that Google is really the best search engine. I have made that decision way before Yahoo! decided to surrender their own search engine in favour of Google. Remember those days? It was exactly like IBM licensing their DOS to Microsoft. I guess people never really learn from history. But that’s not my point.
It is very unhealthy that we only depend on one search source. When we forget to cross reference our research or lose a strong alternative source of information, we compromise the accuracy of what we find. We also end up letting Google control what we know. Items deemed not relevant by Google can simply be omitted from the search results and we wouldn’t even know the difference.
By neglecting other alternative search engines, we are actually instrumental in making them weaker. This reduce their relevance and hence their advertising revenue. With less revenue for research, they will lose out further in the quality of their search. This will further reduce their relevance as a search engine, eventually leading to their demise.
To prevent our loss in search alternatives, I believe we should still support the other search engines by using them. Allow them a fighting chance, perhaps even give Google a run for its money. Only then can we see real improvements in the quality of our search.
