There are so many search engines, why do most of the people here think that Google is so durn good!?
Personally, I like Mamma and Dogpile
Any others that you would like to share? Something unique or tripped out??
I use Metacrawler, ProFusion, and Alta Vista at various times, and alternate between them if one doesn’t give me the results I was expecting.
Google indexes the largest number of web pages, according to both its own marketing puff-pieces and to more independent research ( see http://www.searchenginewatch.com ). I find it’s also a lot more pleasing to look at, uncluttered with adverts nad extraneous content – thanks, AltaVista. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect, but I still find it gives me the largest number of relevant returns for my searches. I don’t like metacrawlers, since they tend to be only as good as the component search engine with the largest database.
I like Google because it’s just a search engine. I can go there, type what I’m looking for, and be on my merry way. And I like their cache feature.
I do not have to wade through Google News, Google Weather, Google Horoscopes, Google Recipes, or whatever. I don’t have to dig out my compass and magnifying glass to find the frickin box I’m supposed to put my text in. Type and bam, it goes. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Google first lists sites that are linked to the most instead of amount of keywords matched. Which means that adding lots of fake keywords does not make a site show up higher in the list.
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And Google has the cache thingy, so you can even see pages that aren’t really “there” anymore. Muchly useful.
And because the cache is from Google’s computers, it can sometimes come up quicker than the original page (especialy those buried inside a large ISP, like AOL or Earthlink).
The cached page also highlights the words you typed in, making finding them easier.
To be fair, I haven’t tried most of the other, newer services. I hated Alta Vista and Yahoo doesn’t do it for me (although I love their e-mail and stock tracking services).
But so long as google works for me, I’ll keep using it.
(Oh, just remembered that google caches Adobe pages and photos as well. Way cool.)
Also, Google searchs PDF files, and provides a text version of PDFs. This is a godsend to me at work, because no amount of whining at the computer guy has succeeded in making my copy of Acrobat work.
You can also search the Usenet with Google, using their Deja equipment.
I agree with all of the above about Google’s advantages, but I also like the feature that asks “Did you mean” and then corrects my spelling.
OK, how do they DO that? Does Google have a 2-petabyte hard drive linked to their servers or something?
I’m kinda fond of http://www.searchidea.com, if only because there’s an option to post what you’re looking for on a message board. That way, if you have just no freakin’ clue what parameters to use, someone will point 'em out to you (or even find it for you).
Corr
Don’t forget the Google Image Search Engine. All images, all the time.
Using it, & seeing the various images that pop onto the screen is like a Rorschach test for yourself, for the Web in general, & for the human race.
Like the other said, I like Google because it’s fast and doesn’t take an hour to load up a bunch of crap when all I want to is find a website about vintage teapots (or whatever). It loads up the Google logo, the box to type in, and a few text messages. Compared to my old favorites (used to use Infoseek until it went to crap, then went to Alta Vista as my down-and-dirty search engine until it went to crap), Google does a much faster and efficient job of filling my needs for using a search engine in the first place.
P.S. In typing this, I took another look at the AV and Infoseek (now Go.com) interfaces and noticed that they must have taken a clue and stripped them down to primarily text. Too little, too late though.
All of the above, plus you can set your preferences to Swedish Chef (“Ell Ebuoot Google-a”) or Elmer Fudd (“I’m Feewing Wucky”). I like my search engine with a sense of humor. 
I like Google because it seems to make an intelligent (human-intelligent, not machine-intelligent) decision about my search words or phrase. No matter how well-versed I may be in boolean search logic, it is sometimes difficult to word the search just right, but Google seems to second-guess me correctly.
How Do They Do It?
Either Artificial Intelligence has actually arrived and is hiding in Google, or there is a lot of sensible human effort used. I suspect the latter.
Google is first choice for serious searches (because of all the above). For not-so-serious searches, I’ll sometimes use Dogpile, because I’ve found some interesting or amusing sites that way.
All of the basic reasons given above–it’s a clean, fast-loading page (I use it as my home page); it seems to do a good job of actually searching the Web; and the “cached pages” feature is really cool. I would also add that using Google reminds me when it’s Bastille Day, and lets me know when Swiss Confederation Day or Korean National Liberation Day is.