I mean for general internet searching, that is. Specialized searches (medical, library-related, etc.) don’t count. Is there any point in there even being other search engines at this point? Altavista, Lycos, etc… are they just gathering dust?
Yes (AltaVista). Nothing against Google, I’m just used to AV.
No, not really. I mean, since google has the ability to read my mind, why bother with anything else?
I made a point recently in taking a week away from google and using other general search engines for a week. Since then, I make a point of using various search engines, depending on the search I’m doing.
Just Yahoo if i’m on it, it’s my main page. But usually the google toolbar wins out for convenience.
I use strictly Google unless I really can’t find something and try Ask.com or Yahoo out of desperation. I have my homepage set to Google because it’s so easy to just open a new tab and search something on a whim. I never use the Google toolbar, though.
I was going to copy and ditto RoOsh, but Yahoo! is also my home page and I don’t have the Google toolbar. I rarely use Google per se but do find occasional use of googling and googled as easier to say than “Yahoo! search.” It’s not often that Yahoo! doesn’t satisfy my needs.
Particular reason? Or just a rooting for the underdog kind of thing?
I occasionally use others, like www.sciseek.com or ask.com. I try to avoid MSN Search, because a) it’s incredibly slow and b) doesn’t seem to give me what I’m looking for. 99% of the time, though, if I can’t find it on Google, I can’t find it anywhere else.
I sometimes use dogpile - it’s a meta-search engine that includes Google and several others. Does that count?
I’ve tried using “ask.com” but I always come back to google. Mainly just because google is my portal. When yahoo was my portal, I used its search function a lot more.
The msn.com is a pretty good site, too, but not enough to get me away from google.
Yahoo must have some sort of sweetheart deal with the HP computer I just bought because the tool bar came built in.
Yahoo aint’ bad if you’re trying to do an image search but I mainly stick with Google.
Different systems, different results. Google does not index everything.
I use altavista pretty regularly, too, and I still make considerable use of the Yahoo! directory (dir.yahoo.com) that used to be all Yahoo! was.
Edit: Oh, and lii.org from time to time, but that, like dir.yahoo.com, isn’t really a search engine.
I have used Google since 1999 or there abouts (maybe 2000 my memory is shot) and have not used anything else since. I tried AskJeeves but did not see any reason to use it rather than Google.
I was one of the first, if not the first, of my friends to have even found Google back in the day. I loved it from day one - simple, fast, and a clean, uncluttered screen.
I also have their amazing free, 100% spam-free, Gmail and I always use their analytics program to track my websites.
As of yet, I have found no reason to go to any other search engine - so I guess the short answer is, “No.”
Second the use of dogpile.
I use blue letter I’m looking for something from the bible, but that’s pretty specific.
I use Google, mostly from laziness (it’s so easy to access in Safari), but their bloody sloppy searches are really starting to piss me off - NO, I DO NOT WANT TO SEACH FOR ‘desert’ WHEN I TYPED IN ‘deserter’!
I mostly use Google, but I’m really, really in the market for a better blog search engine that Google blog search, which does not do a good job at all at pulling up sites by relevance. Look for blogs on a specific topic and you’re apt to get all sort of merely related stuff in the top of your search. I would LOVE to dump Google blog search for something more to the point.
Also, Google image search is getting spammed pretty badly at time. And not just for porn. Though, for porn more than anything else, I mean, there’s no use searching for any specific porn-related topic because every last porn site on the Web will have something there. Even with non-porn, I find myself regularly having to scan past 30-40 images from the same site that have nothing to do with my search on Google image search.
The main Google search page still seems to be functioning OK, though.
I often use Exalead. The “Advanced Search” includes “phonetic spelling” and “approximate spelling” options that are very useful.
My loyalty to Google took a dive when Google Answers got the axe.