Technology Corner

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

How important is Google and all the applications surrounding the major search engine for you? Could you live one day without it and just relying on alternative search engines?

It all started with the post on AltSearchEngines:

We at AltSearchEngines are actually asking everyone to go one day (6 am - midnight), Tuesday, June 12th, without using one of the major search engines; Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, or Ask.

This post lead me to a little thinking about how important Google or any of the other major search engines really are. Ok, admittedly there are hundreds of alternative search engines out there that could do the same job. The big question is could they? 

Google is part of my browser. It’s my homepage, it’s my feeds reader, it’s my blog search engine, it’s one of my main advertisement processes (both AdSense and AdWords), it’s such an ubiquitous pack of tools that going by a work day (don’t count holidays or any of those days that I simply cannot see a computer in front of me) without using it is almost unthinkable. Actually, using google is already a process done without thinking: need some found on the internet? Google it… 

I’m very much in favor of “A Day Without…” days. You can find how unimportant some things are in your life if you try, but a day without google?!?

Using the alternative search engines can get you to discover some tools that might in fact help your days, but the success:desperation ratio is just too small for me.

Here are my 5 top reasons why a day without google is not for me:

1. The pack effect. Google has many tools that I use together in one place and interacting with each other. Finding alternatives is probably possible (haven’t tried) but would just mean another bunch of bookmarks and logins that I’m not looking for.
2. Google works. It’s the top search engine for a reason. It works and works well. To write this post I’ve done a little test using 10 “random” search strings on Google and the other 4 major search engines (Yahoo!, MSN, Ask.com and AOL) and repeating them in 5 of the alternative search engines out there (sorry, not going to name them). What I concluded? The top 5 are the top 5 for a reason. Not one of the alternatives gave me better or more relevant results than the top 5 for any of the tested searches.
3. The “looks”. One thing that was immensely attractive to me on Google since the beginning was how stripped the page looks. Search engines with a home page already full of ads or one thousand suggestions to click without me even having typed anything in the search box are hugely counterproductive. Unless I tell it to, I don’t want to know the latest gossips of media people or how nice and sunny it is on the Maldives and look, a nice trip there for half the price…
4. Interactivity and Customization. If I want to have the page full of information, I want it to be information that is relevant to me, information that I chose to be shown to me. With Google I can have that: full search page customization with applications that are actually relevant to me. It’s like a big shopping center with only shops where I actually buy. No loosing time walking around trying to find something: I choose what to see and it is there all in one place.
5. Productivity. This last one is a sort of round-up of all the above. If I’m working on something, I don’t want to waste time. If I can have everything I need in one place, fast, efficiently and customizable that is the one I choose. Google is a major productivity booster with efficient time-wasting cuts.

I don’t use Google because it’s Google, because it’s trendy, because it had its own brand verbalized. I use Google because it works. I don’t want alternatives unless they give me the same quality, not even for one single day.

The “A Day Without Google” was not a day for me. What about you? Did you manage to survive a day without google? Even if you did not know about this initiative, would you try it?