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You are just another shill.

GIT cher search engine HEeeeyaaAA!

They're accused of screen scraping, but the evidence is coincidental at best. They do a search on a misspelled search term, and note that Bing corrects the search term in the same way as Google. It's also the same correction done by Wikipedia, and Teoma, and Ask.com. So, why doesn't Google mention all of these other sites? Maybe because Bing is actually nibbling at their heels, and the other sites are not?

Has anyone here used ask.com? I quit using google for searches a few months ago, and haven't looked back.

While I use Google more than any other search engine, there are 5 others I use as well including Teoma, now owned by Ask.com

I was never saying this. But should we wait until they are? Do the same mistake as with Microsoft? It's a much dirtier and harder job to disrupt a monopoly than trying to stop one from happening. As has been proven with the Microsoft OEM history, for example. It's not because Microsoft is doing a mighty intelligent work at upholding that monopoly. They don't even have to. The customers are doing it for them. Just like the ad market will once Google grows big enough there. Google will be able to give the advertisers the best deals thanks to their economy in the market and that's that.

However there's nothing, not even Google, who can stop a better competitor from taking on Google. Google got big because they indexed more of the web than many other search engines and gave better or more appropriate results when someone searched for something. A competitor can come along and outgoogle Google by indexing more and returning even better results. I switched from Alta Vista and Yahoo! to Google because it worked for me. Now I use 3 SEs other than Google. Though Ask.com bought it I still type Teoma into the address bar. I also use Mooter a lot. And for some specific searches I use About.com. Well, I still use Alta Vista too.

I'm tired of ridiculous Windows behaviors (disk defrag inadvertantly deletes required system DLLs...nice)

I can't find any information on this from my sources. :(

I've gotten a number of error messages from Windows and didn't find anything about them by Googling. In a few cases I did get answers when I tried Teoma. Ah, now it's Ask.com

You used to be able to go to teoma.com and get a very clean page. now it redirects you to this fancy looking page. I still like Ask Desktop Search. It's a bit nicer in some ways than Google Desktop.

Or you could try Teoma (owned by Ask), Exalead (an up and comming French search engine with a number of cool features), GigaBlast (a suprisingly good search built pretty much by one man!) or Wisenut (a search engine owned by Looksmart).

Another good idea is to use one of the Meta search engines. Personally I think Clusty (created by Vivismo) is the best and from your persective has the advantage of not using Google data. Otherwise many people swear by Dogpile (you can switch off Google as a source for results).

Also, many people forget about directories like ODP, which for certain subjects and topics work better than search engines. And whilst on the subject of internet community created resources, more often than not I find the answers I need on good old Wikipedia.

You know it is funny, for a website obsessed with alternative Operating Systems and browsers we don't hear much about alternative ways of finding information. It seems like many people here think the web would impload if Google disappeared. Yeah they are cool and have had some nifty ideas but it is actually suprisingly easy to get by without them.

So what other search engines are there? Is Teoma a viable alternative? What others are there? Sure, they might all keep too much information, but spreading it around would at least make it harder to get a dossier from one place.

Google has a near monopoly (AFAIK), which allows it to extract (close to) the full consumer surplus for the ads it sells

Google has no monopoly in the traditional sense. They are the market leader, but don't control even as much of the search market as Microsoft does the desktop market. There is *very* little barrier to switching away from them, and there are a number of competitors. The only reason Google can keep making money from day to day is because they are consistently better than their competitors.

Look at MSN's main page and then Google's main page. MSN's page:

* Renders incorrectly in Firefox, with buttons lapping off the white main area.

* Is slower to load than Google

* Contains a huge amount of crap that I simply do not care about

* Contains numerous links that *nobody* would ever care about. Who needs a link to find microsoft.com? If they wanted to go to Microsoft, why would they go to msn.com and then look halfway down the page at the side?

* Has flashing, periodically changing images.

* Has ads embedded with the news, rather than clearly delineated, as Google does.

How about Yahoo: Let's take a look.

* Yahoo has a huge banner-sized ad for a Yahoo searchbar at the top of the page (which doesn't seem to actually *do* anything in Firefox when I click on it).

* Yahoo has masses of crap that I, once again, do not care about. I don't need to look at a newspaper thirty times a day (which is what Yahoo's front page seems to be trying to imitate). I do need to search for things thirty times a day. Actually, this single point amazes me. Google is stomping all the other people out there. Everyone else knows that portals were a stupid idea and flopped. *Why* is it that nobody (well, there are a few, like Teoma) is willing to just realize that people want simple and fast (and having powerful, unobtrusive features is frosting, if it can be managed), and not to look at a silly newspaper-like page each day?

* Yahoo has loads of ads embedded throughout the page, not clearly delinated from the rest of the text.

* Yahoo renders incorrectly in Firefox -- the "Advanced, My Web, Answers" text covers up part of the "Yahoo Search!" button and lap off the bottom of the blue box surrounding the "Search the Web" field.

* Yahoo has a lot of services, but they attempt to throw all of them at you. Compare Google's approach -- put only the very commonly used features on the main page, and stuff all the rest on a secondary page, with a brief description that anyone can understand. I'm *far* more likely to try out Google's other features over time after skimming their descriptions than I am to try to click on all of the 500 links on Yahoo's main page to try to find interesting features -- "Yahoo 360 degrees"? What on earth *is* it? Why would I blow my time figuring out what services I might be interested in using when Yahoo can't be bothered to even present them reasonably?

Now let's look at Google's main page.

* There isn't a single ad (if I do a search, I will see ads clearly labelled as such).

* There is a *single*, small image. Google provides more humor and information with this image than most media I read do throughout their entire bodies. They still probably haven't fully exploited that one image. Imagine how unbelivably wasteful of user attention span those competing sites are -- they have images galore, but most of them do nothing to actually aid the user.

* Google makes it easy to use all their primary services from the main page, using just six links, and a seventh for services that aren't used as much. Two other precious links are expended providing a way for people to easily find their other products. One more link is used to provide an *excellent*, easy-to-navigate help system (

Excuse me for being a troll, but from Teoma's website: "Search results appearing under the heading "Sponsored Links" are provided by Google" http://sp.teoma.com/docs/teoma/about/searchwithaut hority.html. I did not know this, but Ask Jeeves is also serving Google ads. By the way, Teoma looks like an AWESOME service. Thanks for sharing it.

It is a publicly traded corporation. Their job IS to make more money. Switch to Teoma, I find it having higher quality "rating" when searching for something. While google has just straight "ratings" for site teoma rates pages on dynamically generated topics. (Thus while google ranks Espn very highly, if you are searching for computing terms, espn ranks low)

MSN Search has only text ads. Sure, it is MS, but the new engine is actually pretty accurate and has useful features like encarta integration.

Yahoo! search also has no image-based ads. Funny how people are constantly bashing Yahoo!, and now Google is going to have image ads on it's search, where Yahoo! removed them a long time ago.

It's called a free market, we wil see how it plays out. If Google alienates their customers, they will migrate elsewhere.

Just shut up with teoma raving, it sucks! Check out for yourself:

http://s.teoma.com/search?q=teoma+index+old&qcat=1 &qsrc=0&Search.x=0&Search.y=0&Search=submit
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&hs=IOo&client=fi refox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=teoma+ind ex+old&spell=1

Eh...
http://mooter.com/

the logo is missing!?

Google currently has the edge on web searches and several other handy apps

I switched to Google a few years ago because when I used another SE like Yahoo! they wouldn't have it but Google would. But now when I google I don't always get a result but when I use Teoma or Mooter I do. So I may switch again, though I'm not sure if it will be to Mooter or to Teoma. As for any apps Google has, I have yet to use any.

I did google "Lew Giles" and nothing came up. AltaVista however came up with 55, Mooter came up with 13, and Teoma came up with 72.

...this is one of those 'you should try Teoma' type of questions.

Teoma is better than google or yahoo, so i think the point is moot.

http://www.teoma.com/

I tried searching google and wikipedia and could not find any similar information. Phrases like "DRM capable sound card" and "DRM capable digital speakers" produce 0 hits on google.

You're right, when I just googled "DRM capable sound card" I got zero results but using Teoma I got almost 9000 results.

Falcon

I tried searching google and wikipedia and could not find any similar information. Phrases like "DRM capable sound card" and "DRM capable digital speakers" produce 0 hits on google.

You're right, when I just googled "DRM capable sound card" I got zero results but using Teoma I got almost 9000 results.

Falcon

GMail is another big change on the previous email concepts. Just the idea of having enough mail storage for the rest of your life, and a way to really be able to take advantage of it (not sure if gmail do some kind of mailrank more than just star important messages, but its search is pretty good anyway) was something completely new in the webmail (or plain mail) arena.

But there are another more important change in all of it. If google dont existed, maybe with time one of the search engine companies maybe could had that idea, think, for a moment, that Microsoft acquired it, patented the idea so no other search engine could come close in results relevance, and filled that with big graphical ads, very strong windows dependency and that the first page of results were mostly paid links.

Yes, google is very important. Even if tomorrow closes the doors, they changed internet for good in a big way. And if it continues to innovate with as good concepts in the future as it did in the past, internet will be a great place to live in.

Interesting, I did a comparison. Now, I happen to own a Via Rhine based NIC so I did a vague search on the string "Linux via-rhine" (without the quotes) on Google, Teoma and Vivisimo. The string doesn't imply anything except that I want my results to show something about Linux related to via-rhine (or vice versa).

In the Teoma Results the first hit of 51,600 was a forum post where someone asked "Trying to install LMD 10 using a Via motherboard with onboard Rhine NIC configuration asks for additional parameters - anyone know these please?" It was about someone having problems with an onboard Rhine chip on Mandrake, very short, not much detail and not particularly interesting (nor would it have been helpful even if I was having problems with it).

In the Vivisimo Results the first hit of 51,600 was to a mailing-list post where the topic was "VIA Rhine problem in 2.4". Someone was having an obscure problem with a D-Link dfe-530tx, probably not what I'm looking for. Ironically there was a link in that post to what turned out to be the first hit on Google, and the mailing list post was actually an answer from a company employee at Scyld Software, which brings us to Google..

In the Google Results the first hit of 99,400 was to "Linux Drivers for PCI Ethernet Chips". The link was to a page at Scyld Software, a Linux company. It had information about several Linux kernel drivers (including Via Rhine/II) along with usage instructions, module settings, support options and diagnostic programs - not to mention a direct link to the driver source code. What I could learn from this hit was a lot, including the fact that I can use the via-rhine driver to both Rhine as well as Rhine II chips.

What I found most interesting about all this was not the results (they speak for them self) but rather the number of hits. Theoma and Vivisimo had the exact same number of hits which leads me to believe that they share the same indexes but filter the results differently (Indeed, the second hit on Vivisimo was the same as the first one on Teoma). I admit, Vivisimo has a really cool interface, especially the "Clustered Results"-thing, but the quality on the hits arent nearly as good as those of Google so none of them are Google replacements, yet. Well, that's my conclusion based on this shallow test anyway.

Oh, and thanks for the links btw - they're going into my collection.

May be Google has done some nifty things with their file-system, but can't we forget about it already? Their search hasn't changed much http://www.google.com/">in the past six years. Of course, the fanboys will salivate over Google calculator and Google unit converter, but on the scale of Internet these "innovations" barely register.

Some of the other search engines are comparable in quality to Google (Teoma, Vivisimo), and may be better, depending on how many points you take away from Google for spam-infested results, too many blogs, too many Wikipedia clones, too many commercial sites, etc. And some sites are so much further on the innovation scale (meet BrainBoost, an artifically intelligent Internet reference desk answering any questions asked in natural English, with amazing quality and accuracy in a very friendly and usable interface) that they put Google to shame.

Clicky

Try http://s.teoma.com/search?q=See%2C+according+to+th e+HTTP+spec%2C+302+is+a+*temporary*+redirect%2C+wh ich+means+Google+is+supposed+to+interpret+whatever +content+it+finds+at+the+302+target+%28your+site%2 9+as+really+belonging+to+the+URL+of+the+source+%28 my+site%29.+Google+is+just+obeying+the+spec+strict ly+here%2C+and+with+devestating+results.+Why%3F+BE CAUSE+THE+DUPE+FILTER+NOW+KICKS+IN%21+You+see%2C+G oogle+has+a+%22dupe+filter%22+that+says+if+the+sam e+exact+content+is+found+for+two+unique+URLs%2C+th en+one+of+the+URLs+is+obliterated+in+the+rankings. +Because+after+all%2C+searchers+don%27t+want+to+be +finding+the+same+content+over+and+over.+If+that+h appens%2C+they%27ll+start+using+a+different+search +engine.+But+Google%2C+sticking+strictly+to+the+HT TP+spec%2C+doesn%27t+know+who+the+content+really+b elongs+to+when+it+gets+a+302.%0D%0A&qcat=1&qsrc=0& Search.x=0&Search.y=0

So try Teoma instead. They're not as well known as Google but I find they return much more relevant results in many cases.

Do you really think it would be difficult at all for Google to just manually tweak their search database to make their pages on traffic come up first given the appropriate searches?

If they went that way, how easy do you think it would be to spot? Is it not better that they are doing this in a relatively open manner? Is it not their database that they are manipulating? Has anyone tried the user agent strings for other spiders?

If you think Google's cheating, there are many other choices out there[1] for you.

1. It's interesting that this search, on GOOGLE, lists Google seventh, AFTER who many of us perceive as their #1 competitor, Yahoo.[2]
2. It's also interesting that Slashdot, a site filled with academic and math geeks[3], does not allow the <sup> tag in posts.
3. And academic math geeks.
4. Unreferenced footnote. Segmentation Fault (core dumped)

Last time I checked there was still:

Yahoo!
Altavista
a9
Ask Jeeves
Lycos
Teoma

...and even:

MSN

Have a reality check; Google is far from a monopoly. They may be the most popular but that's quite different than being a 2 time convicted monopolist.

1. No ads, no clutter, to the right search refinements and relevant links from catalogs.
   
2. 3,272,000 results. City is No 1 (as well as 2,4...), bikes are No 3 (and 6), explorer is No 5, charity is not on the first 6 pages.
   
3. 7 seconds
   
4. No result on the first attempt. No results on the second attempt.
   
5. Direct link to Timeanddate.com's page for Sydney is No 1.

1. Original interface with clustered results (frame-based), metasearch. 2 sponsored links.
   
2. Top 249 results only. City No 1 (6), bikes No 2 (3), charity 11 (there are 20 results per page), explorer No 17.
   
3. 10 seconds
   
4. No result on the first attempt. During second attempt using the "Shepherd" cluster and the 6th result I found out that Alsatians are the 3rd smartest breed (after border collies and poodles), but no exact IQ estimate.
   
5. Direct link to Timeanddate.com's page for Sydney is No 1.

1. 3 sponsored results (marked as such) on top, no clutter, search refinements.
   
2. 8,350,000 results. Bikes No 1 (and 2), city is No 3 (4,5...), charity No 9, explorer No 13.
   
3. 5 seconds
   
4. No result on the first attempt. On the second attempt it listed the relevant page at No 11 (although unlike at Google, the answer itself wasn't in the site summary).
   
5. Direct link to Timeanddate.com's page for Sydney is No 3.

1. No ads, no clutter, to the right search refinements and relevant links from catalogs.
   
2. 3,272,000 results. City is No 1 (as well as 2,4...), bikes are No 3 (and 6), explorer is No 5, charity is not on the first 6 pages.
   
3. 7 seconds
   
4. No result on the first attempt. No results on the second attempt.
   
5. Direct link to Timeanddate.com's page for Sydney is No 1.

1. Original interface with clustered results (frame-based), metasearch. 2 sponsored links.
   
2. Top 249 results only. City No 1 (6), bikes No 2 (3), charity 11 (there are 20 results per page), explorer No 17.
   
3. 10 seconds
   
4. No result on the first attempt. During second attempt using the "Shepherd" cluster and the 6th result I found out that Alsatians are the 3rd smartest breed (after border collies and poodles), but no exact IQ estimate.
   
5. Direct link to Timeanddate.com's page for Sydney is No 1.

1. 3 sponsored results (marked as such) on top, no clutter, search refinements.
   
2. 8,350,000 results. Bikes No 1 (and 2), city is No 3 (4,5...), charity No 9, explorer No 13.
   
3. 5 seconds
   
4. No result on the first attempt. On the second attempt it listed the relevant page at No 11 (although unlike at Google, the answer itself wasn't in the site summary).
   
5. Direct link to Timeanddate.com's page for Sydney is No 3.

Granted Teoma is operated by AskJeeves, but it's hardly the same engine, but it's too bad that they left it out. I think it's one of the better searches out there -- it tops MSN's new search, easily.

Teoma.com : Instead of ranking results based upon the sites with the most links leading to them, Teoma analyzes the Web as it is organically organized-in naturally-occurring communities that are about or related to the same subject-to determine which sites are most relevant. Teoma is the only search technology that can locate communities on the Web within their specific subject areas, as they actually exist. And this allows us to finely tune our search process, providing more precise results.

There's a few other ones, but honestly I only use Google.

My first experience was terrible. I clicked on a result and it was opened in a frame. That immediately ruled it out of my list of potential Google successors.

Vivisimo and Teoma are looking good so far but why is it that none of them can use basic web standards properly?

That contract is for paid advertising, not search. Jeeves has their own search engine based on technology they acquired from Teoma.

Jeeves uses Googles paid advertisments, but their search engine is entirely their own. They bought the company Teoma, which had developed it's own competing search technology. That's what all the Jeeves properties use for search now.

If you don't want the paid ads then go to their Teoma site instead. It's the same search engine, just a lot fewer sponsered/paid links.

Yeah, it sure is slick, at 92 kilobytes... In comparision, Google main page is only 9 kilobytes, of which 8 kilobytes is the logo. Result pages are upwards from 100 kilobytes. This includes bloated table-based design, some ugly javascript hacks of undeterminable usefulness, sign in for a search engine instead of anonymous cookies and a fucking diary!

While A9 may not win any bloat contests among search engines, calling it "slick" is a bit of a misnomer.

When I am in the mood for some indie searching, I'd rather use Vivisimo, Teoma or All the Web.

P.S. A9 may be great and all, but at 100KB per page I am not using it.

With Google Groups 2, Gmail, and Orkut, Google has proven that they have three distinguishing characteristics in any new marketplace.

1. People who know JavaScript well.
2. Server errors.
3. A legion of fans who brush away the server errors by saying "It's BETA! What do you expect?!"

A year from now, when My Google and Google Messenger launch, Google will be nothing other than a less graphical, more geeky version of Yahoo!. The Slashdot crowd will tire of the new sell-out "evil" Google and move on to another search engine. I suggest Teoma. It's unpopular, so it must be good.

The interesting fact is that competing engines such as Vivisimo, Teoma, AllTheWeb and of course Yahoo are basically as good as Google.

Vivisimo in particular often works better than Google (for me, it may not for you). Many times I failed to find what I wanted because Google returned results (several pages) which are somewhat relevant, but not what a search for these multiple keywords should return. Vivisimo, on the other hand, usually had 100% relevant results near the top.

Hmmmm - I thought google just pointed to information. Also, there are alot of other people collecting information and pointers to information: Internet Archive Teoma Search etc...

Finally, if you are so worried about google controlling everything - why don't you build your own search engine and start collecting your own pointers?

It doesn't seem like the end of the world to me.

What would be bad would be having only one or a few limited sources of information - much as existed prior to the internet. Today we have much more options for finding information - now we just have to figure out good and fast ways to come to some consensus between various conflicting sources. Again, a challenge to be overcome - not the end of the world.

Say, these guys?

Go on. Try a search. Watch actual results come up, instead of thousands of affiliate sites.

There is more to search than Yahoo, MSN or Google.
How about Vivisimo, Teoma and AllTheWeb. Diversity is always good. I will find with other search engines things that you will not find on Google alone. And additional search features like clustering at Vivisimo are great.

I had this problem too until I updated to Firefox 0.9(.1/.2). Before that I used the trick to change the text size up and then back to normal, which miraculously solves all rendering problems.

One site that I still find doesn't render properly is Teoma. I always use Google though, so that doesn't affect me nearly so much as Slashdot.

And you have also metasearchers, that not only search google, but also others. If you want almost the opposite of google in simplicity, you can try Kartoo, where you can have graphs with aggrupations on search results, flash animations and things like that.

Last, but not least, there are a search engine that you can use to find search engines very close to you. If its good enough, probably there is a Slashdot article on it, so slashdot search is a good first step if all the other search engines you know are down but you still can access slashdot.

http://www.teoma.com/Teoma.com is a great Google alternative. Many haven't heard of it, but it's great!

I like a multitude of search engines, and I find google to be harder and harder to get reviews out of. I've gotten better but so have the google bombers. (although to be honest this effects most search engines.)

I have to put a few words in that a sales page won't have (sharpness for lenses saturation for printers etc..) to hunt down the reviews.

Besides google I've been using Teoma ,
yahoo
About.com (which sometimes is junky but pretty good for some topics

and when looking hard voila.com which despite having to select "world" instead of "france" works well..

They are making their webmail a playfield like is the domain name ownership one, and if it last months a to have really big webmail mailboxes, ligth webpages, intelligent spam/virus filtering and threaded mail view will be so common than when it will be finally out could be no news.

I even wonder if in the open source webmail market not exist already one that provides a good part of what gmail will give who knows when.

At this moment i would open the registration in gmail, not by invitation, but at will, still leave there the "beta" mark to show that still could be rough edges, but to accaparate the market before is too late. What if i.e. the actual Teoma come out around the same time google started? still google would be the #1?

Well, anyway, i could be wrong, not tested yet so i can't say how hard or easy could be duplicated with advantages, but so far for non-users is almost vapourware.

Teoma is a fairly decent search engine; not open source, however.

the bad part: there will be even more crappy Google results (we should give Teoma a chance, since it can't be spammed as easily using links on irrelevant pages)

" But Microsoft is now turning its considerable might toward catching up. It's a move that puts Microsoft head to head with Google, the world's most popular Web surfing vehicle, and Yahoo, the Internet's most popular destination, in what many see as an important, growing and lucrative market.

"I think you'll see some good competition in this area," Ballmer said. "

I'm not saying this is impossible, new things come up all the time, and users have no loyalty, they'll switch to whatever is easiest, but the problem with MS and Yahoo! is that they simply won't be as good as Google, Google is fast, simple, it loads fast, has good search results, once again I think both MS and Yahoo! will be focusing on good results, and, while a major thing, it is not everything, their pages will still be full of advertisements, long loads, and anything but simple.

Having said that I hope there will be a rival to Google, I've found Teoma and ZapMeta to be pretty good, and both going for the simple look.

Fun new one to try: Mooter