Mike-Ward.Net

Is it time to reconsider Google?

In his blog article “It’s time to reconsider Google?”, Rafe Needleman discusses his experience with different search engines and concludes that Google is no longer the best. Needleman asks:

Is it time to dump Google as your search engine? Lately I’ve been finding myself drifting away from my old friend. Newer services do just as much – or more – than Google does, and they do it with nicer interfaces.

He points out some interesting tidbits like the traffic features of Windows Live and Yahoo and how Ask.com has pop-up images of sites. I actually went to all the sites he listed and frankly, I don’t understand what he sees.

Take maps for instance. I picked my hometown, Ann Arbor, MI. Yahoo Maps and Windows Live show lots of detail but is it a better interface than Google Maps. I don’t see how. I think the Google map looks better but Yahoo and Windows look good to so it is just a matter of taste I suppose. What I didn’t like was how slow Yahoo and Windows Live were. Google Maps draws twice as fast on my box and zooms faster as well. Speed wins the day here.

Ask.com wasn’t even a contest. The results were less relevant, the format harder to read and the speed again was much less than Google. And I actually like the ads since they are relevant and often times point to options I hadn’t consider. There’s a reason Google owns 90% of the market.

One point we do agree on is Google Desktop is a real drag on your system. I’ve tried it a couple of times only to have to uninstall it because of the drain it puts on my system. I have not tried Yahoo Desktop Search but then I generally stay away from Yahoo products because of all the advertising and junk mail I end up getting when I use their stuff.

Sorry Rafe, but for this middle-aged techie, Google still rules.