Comments for April 1st, The Annual Day Without Google - Can You Live Without It For One Day?

April 1st, The Annual Day Without Google - Can You Live Without It For One Day?

2008-03-31T17:59:51Z

Our network blog has just announced an annual 'Day Without Google', starting tomorrow April 1st. ASE editor Charles Knight writes: "All we’re asking is that for One Day you try one of the Top 100 Alternative Search Engines". He implores us to "Choose one, choose several, but for One Day give the Alternative search engines a fighting chance and see what life would be like without Google." He also hastens to add that ASE "is not anti-Google", they just want us to explore alternatives. It's a great idea, however for some of us it will impact our daily work...

]]> ReadWriteWeb lead writer Marshall Kirkpatrick notes in the comments on ASE that "I love the idea but a day without - for example the Google Custom Search Engines I’ve set up - is a bad day for work. What about Lijit, which uses Google CSEs as well? I presume GMail doesn’t count. Ugh. It’s frightening how dependent we are."

This probably should be called the Day Without Google Search, as like Marshall I can't live without Gmail (which I use to manage all my email accounts). Even so, it will be a struggle for me not to use Google Search, simply because it is still IMHO the best search engine around. It's fast, simple and usually delivers me the search results I want.

However I'm all for the idea of experimenting with new search apps - and this is what ASE's Day Without Google Search is really about. We ran a similar day last year and got some great comments and discussion on alternative search engines.

I'm going to try out some of the new semantic search engines tomorrow, April 1st. How about you? Leave your thoughts in the comments here or on AltSearchEngines.

Comment from Marshall Kirkpatrick on 2008-03-31

2008-03-31T18:38:15Z

I'm thinking about writing a post about alternatives to Google Reader, for the holiday.

Comment from Yakov on 2008-03-31

2008-03-31T19:05:16Z

Happy upcoming April's Fool Day tomorrow!

Comment from Mark Cramer on 2008-03-31

2008-03-31T19:26:06Z

I'm pretty sure Charles is talking about Google search, and not Gmail or any of the other Google services. That being said, some of the ASEs are built on top of one or more of the major search engines, including Google, so if you're using one of those you won't be 'completely' Google search free. However, unless I'm mistaken I've believe that's still in the 'spirit' of giving the ASEs a try.

Comment from Charles Knight on 2008-03-31

2008-03-31T19:43:27Z

Yes, Richard and Mark are entirely correct. The ban only applies to Google Search. Thanks for the clarification.

Comment from Nah on 2008-03-31

2008-03-31T21:04:58Z

Nah... I'll stick with Google Search. Good luck with the effort though. ;)

Comment from Stephen Edgar on 2008-03-31

2008-04-01T01:11:04Z

I used Google once today to get a screenshot and only twice in the past twelve months :P

http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/8987/googletrendspo7.jpg

Comment from Ann Femia on 2008-03-31

2008-04-01T01:36:20Z

I love GOOGLE

Comment from kamla bh on 2008-03-31

2008-04-01T01:58:11Z

Did you not have a day without google not so long ago? I remember I tried to do without Google, but did not make it too bar. Bad habits die hard :-)

Kamla

Comment from magnoliasouth on 2008-03-31

2008-04-01T03:46:35Z

Sorry, but I'll not go without Google and especially NOT tomorrow. That's the one day that I look forward to most from Google. That's an awful lot to ask for and besides, why should I even bother with other search engines? They just don't do it for me.

Comment from Yakov on 2008-03-31

2008-04-01T06:58:03Z

Happy April Fool's Day :)

Comment from Samidh Chakrabarti on 2008-04-01

2008-04-01T07:22:49Z

It says sad things about human curiosity when people are so convinced that Google is the best search engine that they are unwilling to try any others. Makes one wonder, if Yahoo or Live did ever leapfrog Google, would anyone ever notice? Or is the consensus now that Google is "good enough" and search is a solved problem? Perhaps this is a good time for a new generation of Stanford Ph.D. students to get in the game.

Comment from Andrew on 2008-04-01

2008-04-01T08:35:25Z

For me it's easy: I use Yahoo mail and search (yeah, I'm from those 12%). But how can I avoid Google on this very day when they got an April Fool Joke? Are you kidding?

Comment from VTFootballGrad on 2008-04-01

2008-04-01T14:49:09Z

Yeah Googles the market leader, so it will always be perceived as the best. That doesn't mean there are any better ones out there.

Comment from Todd Vernon on 2008-04-01

2008-04-01T16:23:44Z

Richard, Bring it on! It’s true that Lijit uses Google Custom Search as the indexer for a good deal of our smaller and mid size publications. However, we started using our proprietary indexer for our larger publishers starting last year. The results we obtain are much better and allow us more flexibility for our larger publishers. Try searching http://blog.guykawasaki.com, or http://scobleizer.com, or http://www.askdavetaylor.com.

Comment from Gil Megidish on 2008-04-02

2008-04-02T12:30:22Z

Hahaha!

I actually OWNED www.adaywithoutgoogle.com (or .org, can't remember.) I was aiming to make a day that people will just get random websites. Well, you can use StumbleUpon nowadays. Clearly I should have finished it :)

-- gil

Comment from Gil Megidish on 2008-04-02

2008-04-02T12:30:49Z

Hahaha!

-- gil