If you hadn’t heard, Google had an outage last week. And, of course, it put the general internet community in a state of outright panic. Then Google fixed the problem(s) it had and life went on as usual.
I’ve been using the internet long enough to where I remember what it was like before Google. Even though the site made its appearance in 1998, people really didn’t start switching over to it until after 2000.
Speaking of which, the big G currently commands 63% of the market in the United States. Yes, that’s an overwhelming number, however, it still proves that Google doesn’t rule over all of it. It also proves that people are willing to use something else when necessary.
What I do remember about internet searching in the pre-2000 era is that the playing field, search engine-wise, was more even. If you first went to Yahoo and couldn’t find what you wanted, you headed over to Lycos. Or Hotbot. Or WebCrawler. And there were more. Each had its own way of getting the information you needed. Each had its own "personality", so to speak. And people liked it. But that’s a bygone era now.
Or is it?
I do purposely try other search services just to see what’s out there. Instead of using Lycos or Hotbot like I did years ago, I now use a combination of blog, messaging and video searches.
One of my personal favorites is Icerocket for blogs and messaging searches.
Example: If you search for nintendo punch-out (a game being released today for the Wii today, site), you not only see what people are saying about the game, but also immediate references for each result as well, including the number count (something Google’s blog search doesn’t do). The interface is a whole lot more inviting and it’s just easier to use compared to "The Google Way".
So can you live without Google?
Yes.
As long as you’re aware of alternatives like Icerocket or others like Kosmix (which is really nice by the way), A9 and so on, you’re in good shape.
Granted, some try some crazy ideas, like Faroo does, but hey, alternatives are good because sometimes they bring around great things.
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