Who do you search with?

There are so many search engines out there and so many ways to try to make sense of the internet. Most people think of Google when they think search. I use Blingo for my Google results, because I can win prizes but still get the same search results. My startup page is Excite, which is an amazing news portal, and I enjoy the Search Spy feature just for search voyeurism, although I don't search with it often. I tried Yahoo as a news portal and search, but they never just felt right.

I also use the A9 toolbar, more for the portability of the bookmarks and less for the searching though (unless I'm looking for something on Amazon). A9 has changed it's searching some. They now get their search results from Windows Live, but the image results come from Flickr or Webshots instead of an internet image search, so you end up with snapshots mostly. I'm not real happy about that, but I really like the clean toolbar. I also like the street views you get from their yellow page search. They actually show you photos of store fronts in many places.

But an Ask commercial really struck a chord with me the other day, where the little kid says "Google's not better, it's just more popular." So I started poking around Ask just to see what they offer. Ask seems to have some neat features, and I like the map and directions because you can switch from driving to walking directions and still drag the map like Google does. It also appears you can save search results like A9, and do a desktop search like Google Desktop.

I guess with technology like it is, these companies must always be evolving and innovating. It can be exhausting from the consumer side trying to decide which service is best. I guess that's how we end up with email accounts at Yahoo, Hotmail, Excite, Gmail and Bellsouth. And in the end, I still feel like I'm searching the junk drawer whenever I use a search engine.