Day Without Google Begins!
Are you ready to spend a whole day, today (Tuesday), without using Google? There are literally hundreds of alternative search engines to choose from. Once again here are the 'ground rules', as prepared by AltSearchEngines editor Charles Knight:
1. All day Tuesday, June 12th, don’t use any of the 5 major search engines.
2. Avoid Meta search engines, since most of them include the major search engines.
3. Likewise, the specialized vertical search engines may be too narrowly focused.
4. Consider changing your homepage or downloading their toolbar. You can always uninstall everything and change back on Wednesday.
5. On Wednesday, leave a detailed comment on AltSearchEngines and share your experience with the rest of us. Which alt search engine did you chose? How would you rate the experience?
Larry Dignan from Between The Lines (whose idea this was to begin with) is exploring alternative search engines with gusto, despite running into a lack of browser toolbars and add-ons for said search engines. Perhaps that is something for Google's competitors to work on.
As for me, I will be checking out Hakia and other search engines tomorrow (actually Wednesday for me, but I work on US time these days!). If you are taking part in the Day Without Google, be sure to comment on your experiences over on AltSearchEngines - where already there are many comments.
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http://www.aftervote.com is a great choice to use as a alternative to google, as its highly customizeable, social and even lets you tweak every imaginable setting. You still get google results too!
Check it out! http://www.aftervote.com
Make sure you guys check out http://www.aftervote.com as your alternative :)
If I were doing this.. I'd probably stick to dmoz.org, Wikipedia, AllTheWeb, Altavista and IceRocket. Altavista and AllTheWeb were my two engines of choice up until 2000, when I switched to Google, and surprisingly.. they look almost the same now! :)
Been using Google all day. Will continue to do so. It does what I want of a search engine. Why would I switch to a Google wannabee? If they're that good word will spread just at it did with Google.
Damn, i was close... Using none of the google facilities, until 20 min ago, when i was looking for something php code related. I've found that... on 5th page:)
Nice, no?
I wish I had heard about this earlier. I'm not sure I could do my job without the major search engines.
however, I have found that del.icio.us makes a very accurate search engine in certain sectors of the web
Google will live forever and all of us would use more and more products from google, like Google OS or smtb else.
That's not how you remove google... look at this article - it really removes complete google:
http://www.centernetworks.com/my-life-without-google
I did what James recommended and it's interesting - especially in conversation - I have to keep catching myself about saying "go google that".
With so many removing google - what will happen - will this become a lasting trend?
Why struggle through a day of poor web experience? I like my high quality search results, lack of spam in my email, and easy to navigate UI's. Have today with this!
"high quality search results" ?
You have seriously not tried any other search engine lately huh? Google scores beneath average in 99% of my searches.
"lack of spam in my email" ?
Get your own mail server ;-) Yahoo! mail and Inbox.com are great alternatives.
"easy to navigate UI's" ?
As opposed to ... ?
Just read about this using Google Reader. Will probably pop up to my Google search in the FireFox toolbar after posting this comment. Talk about lock-in.
I am wondering which search engine is going to get the most usage and why on this Day!
Google is the most rude and socially irresponsible company since SPECTRE and CHAOS. Really, worse than NSA wiretapping because there is no justification for some of these features. You can actually create a search engine that does not allow searches on IP strings or e-mail addresses (used for cyber-stalking and defamation), or that does not include Google Groups (Usenet) results (these are flame war communities where 90 percent of messages are designed to "out" or "defame" others). But Google seems to know what the most evil of us Americans want in our war against neighbors and unpopular bloggers ... and so it obliges. Ick!
Before Eric Schmidt joined Google, I suspect he was in dry wall. Remember that hole in the wall to the woman's shower in the film Porkey's.
By the way, I tried giving Google a taste of its own medicine by defaming one of its employees in much the same way a business associate of mine had been defamed in Google Groups. (Google defends all cyber-stalking and defamation as "free speech"). Within a day, all the posted material about the employee had been expunged (i.e. disappeared from Google Groups and Google Web's archive of web sites that archive Google Groups). Yikes!
I spent the day using Quintura, and really liked it. I found that it gave me useful results up front (#1 was often exactly what I was after), and the cloud made it much easier to pursue the specific interpretation of a term e.g. diagram as in graphic rather than Diagram the band, without having to figure out the words to add to focus the search. Thanks for creating an excuse to try out something new.
A true "day without using Google" would be to remove your site from Google's index. My guess is that this is not something that you're interested in doing any time soon. ;)
I used googlereader to read this post yesterday, but I think I already violated the agreement on that one.
This is dumb.
I really don't see the point in that. All these alternative search engines and freedom campaign of ask is just a way to tell people come use our service instead of Google. Isn't that marketing? Google is one of the best services out there, works fine, gives good results and from the end user point of view is free. I really don't see the point of this campaign
Well, how about google shutting down all its services to the internet for a day, no analytics (oh sorry, even this site uses analytics).
I think you should suggest a day when Google returns the favor, but shutting down analytics and adwords for a day.. hahahahahahaha
nice experiment to boot. resisting googling for a day. hmmm..