Competition in Search
If you want to see just how competitive the search space has gotten, you need look no further than the complete mix of tools that I use on a regular basis. The search engines are trying to be a "one stop shop" but they all have their hits and misses.

Here is my list:

Toolbar - Google; because I like the "blog this button" for blogger. No other reason, hence gets about half of my searches
Homepage - My Yahoo; great for keeping track of stocks, news, weather etc. I now probably do half my searching with Yahoo because of My Yahoo.
RSS (desktop) - Newsgator; I like reading feeds from Outlook
RSS (laptop) - Bloglines; just seems easier when on the road (I may switch desktop to Bloglines soon).
Instant Messenger - Trillian; no ads and I can IM both AOL and MSN accounts
Map Search - was MapQuest, now switched to Google Maps
Image search - Ask Jeeves; they just seem to have a fresher index
Blog search - Feedster; results seem accurate and updated often
Blog backlinks - Technorati; again seems to be most accurate
Desktop Search - Google for quick searches in email; Copernic for deeper searches
News Search - both Google and Yahoo.
Local Search - Yahoo; just because
Shopping - Pricegrabber; I always seem to find best prices and good selection of vendors.
Webmail - Yahoo for personal; GMail for the blog.

Isn't that crazy? You'd think that one provider would be able to accomodate all of my needs, but I find that no one company has gotten everything right. It goes to show how tough it's going to be for these companies to dominate in more than one space.
Andy Beal | permalink | +marktd |