Our network blog has just announced an annual ‘Day Without Google’, starting tomorrow April 1st. ASE editor Charles Knight writes: “All were 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 Ive set up – is a bad day for work. What about Lijit, which uses Google CSEs as well? I presume GMail doesnt count. Ugh. Its 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.
