Do not use Google.

[Skooz]

Is there a better alternative?

I don't know if it is better, but Good Search is quite good and every time you use it, they donate a penny to the charity of your choice.

[AFreeBird]

Well, I surf with JS turned off (actually constrained by NoScript) and pop ups are disabled, and I don’t see any unwanted stuff on google. And I only use the search engine, nothing more that they offer. So I don’t see how they make money off me.

[jetxnet]

Sounds good, it’s just they can show X amount of traffic to advertisers (via searches).

If people were to ban the search part as well, their traffic reports would sink and advertisers wouldn’t be willing to pay as much for sponsored ads etc., thus decreasing their revenue.

[batter]

I have made a search engine plug-in for firefox users. If anyone is interested, FReepmail me and I can get it to you.

[joseph20]

What do you think of AltaVista?

Does AltaVista have bad politics too?

[jetxnet]

Thanks ...

Alta Vista used to be a household name, but has really declined over the years because of Google.

I’m not sure how effective it is anymore.

It really comes down to how many “web crawlers” they deploy everyday to update the content. I know Google and Yahoo are fairly close, and MSN trails, but not by far.

I don’t know about Alta Vista politics, but have you tried icerocket.com? It seems comparable to Google.

[Reaganwuzthebest]

Thanks for the link. I couldn’t imagine browsing without NoScript and I notice Chrome has nothing for javascript control. Not surprising since they need scripts for displaying ads or running plugins like Flash. I suspect they’ll be dropping Firefox support altogether eventually if by chance Chrome becomes more widely used.

[superfries]

It isn’t about who has the better search engine. It is about how many pages the search engine has indexed. Google leads in this category. Exalead is another great search engine. Less than .05 % of the entire web is indexed for search engines to find them. In order for ANY search engine to return the result of John’s Homepage, it first needs to index that page. Right now the shared results from exact (very similar) searches on the 3 main search engines return a 12% match for two engines and a .04 % match for all three. Meaning if I searched for something on Google, around 12% of the web pages returned as matches would be found using the same search in LIVE or Yahoo. Around 4% of the same pages would be found on all three search engines using the same search criteria. This is not a science and the results vary depending on what time of the day the searches are done.

[superfries]

You should take a look at this chart to see where Google and Yahoo and MSM LIVE get their search results...http://www.bruceclay.com/serc_histogram/histogram.htm

[superfries]

Here is a list of all the dead search engines

* AlltheWeb [Switched to Yahoo! database in March 2004]
* AltaVista [Switched to Yahoo! database in March 2004]
* Britannica Directory [some Web sites still included in the commercial Britannica, but not in the free version]
* Deja.com [Defunct Usenet search, bought by Google and became Google Groups]
* Direct Hit [Defunct, redirecting to Teoma]
* Excite [Defunct as a separate database. Now uses an InfoSpace meta search]
* Excite News (NewsTracker) [Defunct]
* Flipper [Hidden Web databases from Quigo, defunct by Fall 2003]
* Go [Defunct as a separate database, took over Infoseek, switched to Overture, then to Google]
* Go (Infoseek) News [Defunct]
* Infoseek [Defunct as a separate database, bought by Disney for Go, then abandoned in favor of Overture]
* HotBot [Dropped Inktomi database in early 2005, now only a multi-search of Google and Ask Jeeves]
* InvisibleWeb.com [a hidden Web directory, defunct by 2003]
* iWon [Old Inktomi version defunct. Now uses Google “sponsored” ads and Web and image databases]
* LookSmart [Directory
* Lycos [Switched to Yahoo!/Inktomi database in April 2004 and Ask Jeeves in 2005.]
* Magellan [Dead, redirects to WebCrawler]
* MessageKing [Defunct Web forum search engine as of Fall 2003]
* MSN Search [predecessor of Live Search]
* NBCi (formerly Snap) [Defunct, now uses metasearch engine Dogpile]
* NBCi Live Directory (formerly Snap) [Defunct directory]
* Northern Light [Defunct as a Web search engine as of 2002.]
* Northern Light Current News [Dead. Updates ceased as of Feb. 28, 2003.]
* Openfind [Under “reconstruction” as of 2003]
* Teoma [Dead, technology bought and now used by Ask.com]
* WebCrawler [Defunct as a separate database. Now uses an InfoSpace meta search]
* WebTop [Dead]
* WiseNut [Died in 2007]

Here is a list of the live search engines...

* Google
* Live Search
* Ask
* Yahoo!
* Exalead
* Gigablast

IceRocket is not a search engine it is a web bot......here is a link to all the various bots...http://www.botsvsbrowsers.com/category/1/index.html