Google is dead, long live Google
My experiment to live without Google is, I have to admit it, a total failure. I cannot live without Google Search, and once you are outside of your neighbourhood, it is also hard to avoid Google maps.
The reason why I cannot live without Google is twofold. Reason one is that the other search engines are way behind Google. I 'll give you a couple of examples in a minute. But reason two is even stronger, and it is one that you are not aware of unless you try to stay away from Google: Whenever I was doing a search on another search engine, I had this gnawing feeling that I was missing out on something - a sudden uneasyness that Google would show me excactly what I was looking for.
One of the first things I had to do after I started my experiment "living without Google" was to find the clearing number of my bank, the migros bank (a small swiss bank). For all searches, I used the search query "clearing nummer migros bank" ('nummer' is german for 'number').
First, I tried yahoo. The two top results for yahoo were content-free (!), keyword-spammed pages from a so called credit institute. Good bye, yahoo (and that's when my reason number two started to kick in).
Second, I tried MSN. Result number one was similar to Yahoo's, result number two was a computer shop, result number three a hockey school... farewell, MSN. (devil: but maybe Google would... angel: NO!!!)
Third, quite desperate, I tried the most famous Swiss search engine, search.ch. I mean, migros bank is a swiss bank, after all. On top of the search result page, I got an ad from coop bank, which is migros bank's most direct competitor. The next two results brought me to another search engine (!!!), including search queries that have nothing to do with my original search query. Adios, search.ch.
Then, I read a comment on the blog with a hint about ask.com. I checked ask.com, and voila, result number one was *the* page of *the* bank with exactly the information I was looking for. Finally!
I have used ask.com ever since, but that feeling about missing out on something hasn't left me (although, as I recently observed, the Google search results for that specific search query are as crappy as the other search engines' results). However, I recently read on reddit that ask.com blocks some searches, e.g. search for certain words, such as pedophilia (not that I would search for pedophilia, but maybe somebody is interested in "laws on pedophilia", and that is blocked as well. Way to go, ask.com - you are a search engine, so please give me search results for whatever I search for - this is not China).
Bottom line - it's too hard to live without Google. I will not make any business with them, but I will continue using their free search services. But only because the competition is even worse.