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March 17, 2007

A Campaign for Alternative Search Engines


Ask.com has a campaign in the UK called "Information Revolution". Their purpose is to convince the people who use Google to search online that they should use other search engines too. While the message is noble, Ask's arguments are a little out of place. They suggest that Google could control the information and become the Ministry of Truth from Orwell's 1984.
Did you know that more than 75% of people in the UK use just one search engine to find information? The same search engine. The biggest search engine. The most popular search engine. Why? It's not that there aren't choices, it just seems that most people don't use them.

You can imagine we were rather curious about this, so we did some research and found that 62% of Internet users don't think about which search engine they use. We call that sleep searching, you probably call it 'getting stuff online'.

But statistics aside, if this keeps up, who knows what could happen? One company could eventually be your only source of access to information on the Web! Controlling your mind would only be a step away! Then they'll have you. All too easy...

But this is 2007, not 1984. So we're speaking up before things get out of hand. Raging against the machine kind of thing. The machine of conventional wisdom if you like!

It's always a good idea to use more than one source of information, but scaring people away with Orwellian allusions is not a good strategy. Especially when the search engine you advertise has a long way to go before becoming a reliable source of information.

The campaign is also a call to rebellion against the establishment and the layouts and the texts seem to be inspired by Che Guevara, the leader of the Communist Revolution in Cuba.

While many people suggest that Google is actually a monopoly and has become synonymous with search, the cost of switching to other search engines is minimal. Especially when Yahoo and Microsoft ask you if you want to switch to their search engines everytime you visit them. You don't have to download new software, learn how to use it and become comfortable with it (you have to do this if you switch from Windows - Microsoft's monopoly). To change your default search engine is as easy as changing your homepage or the default engine from the search box. But to do that you need to have a reason, to see a search engine that shows much better results than Google for most queries. As long as the alternatives are worse, it's no wonder that people use Google.

Update:
Ask UK shows this "smart answer" when you search for [search]. According to Matt Cutts, the same "smart answer" was displayed when you searched for [Google].


{ The first image is licensed as Creative Commons by montini. }

11 comments:

  1. Ask.com is nothing short of a parasite service... cashing in by ripping off worthy sites like Wikipedia.

    I have nothing but contempt for them & I hope they fail miserably!

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's not true, Digistrom. Just like Google, Ask tries to show you direct answers for some queries (and they show more direct answers than Google). Those answers happen to come from Wikipedia most of the time, but they use other sources as well.

    Some examples:

    a search for [Austria] in Ask.com - the information at the top is from cia.gov

    a search for [Austria economy] in Google - info from cia.gov

    They only show a snippet so they don't steal anything - it's just "fair use".

    ReplyDelete
  3. We all know google is the best for everyday use, but it needs the others to keep it on its toes; hakia is pretty good for some things.
    If I have a gripe about google it's the number of ebay refs which come up in it

    ReplyDelete
  4. Can you give examples of important queries that return eBay referrals?

    ReplyDelete
  5. There seems to be a rash of these types of "come on everyone let's be different together" advertisements on the Underground. The idont.com site (now taken down) that was about ipod users being sheep was another good example of this.
    I think it is funny that activism and individuality are couched in revolutions and subversion. This refers to Americans, but I think that globalization has really made stupidity an international trait.
    "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."
    ~~H. L. Mencken

    ReplyDelete
  6. I recommend you all try these visual search engines. They are way better, but still need some work.

    http://www.kartoo.com
    http://quintura.com/
    http://grokker.com/

    ReplyDelete
  7. I would encourage you to check out my list of the Top 100 Alternative Search Engines on Read/WriteWeb (www.readwriteweb.com) here:

    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_100_alternative_search_engines_feb07.php

    ReplyDelete
  8. My small contribution to to the list of alternative search engines. There is one more interesting search-engine [http://dooblet.com] It is focused on finding alternatives to almost everything. It searches alternative not only for software, cars, drugs, but also to many other different terms. For example, simply enter a name of a product or a company and click on 'dooble!' to get the list of alternatives. The found alternatives are ordered by relevance. You can contribute by adding your own alternatives.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Try this:
    http://www.alternative-zu.de/q/Google

    ReplyDelete
  10. http://www.alternative-zu.de/q/Firefox

    ReplyDelete

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