Battling Against My Addiction to Google
Posted: Thursday, December 17, 2009
by Andy Thomas
BigAngryDog.BlogSpot.com
My name is Andy and I am a Googleholic.
When I started doing Google, I just did the occasional search now and then. It was OK at first, and I thought I could control it. But you know how it is, I became dependent on Google without ever realizing it was happening.
Now I just can't seem to start the day without checking my Gmail account, and like many people, I'm helplessly dependent on Google for searching the Internet. But that's not all. I'm also a regular user of the hard stuff: Google WebTools, Google Adsense, Adwords, and YouTube (also Google). In fact, even my blog is hosted by Google.
Recently, however, I've begun to wake up and have been contemplating the notion that there is hardly any aspect of my life which is unknown to Google. This is especially true since every email sent to me over the last few years has found its way into my Gmail account.
I fear it's not just me. It seems there is hardly any form of public or private information that Google is not involved in hosting, facilitating, or otherwise granting access to.
I don't know about you, but all of a sudden, I find this slightly disconcerting.
So recently I decided that I would try to claw back a small, but significant, piece of independence from Google. Given that it was search that initially propelled Google to such dominance, I am now trying to wean myself off Google when searching the Internet.
For the last week or so, I've been experimenting with StartPage.com, a little known alternative search engine. What attracted me to Startpage, rather than say Microsoft's Bing.com, is that Startpage does not record your IP address.
With most search engines, everything gets stored - your search query, the time of your visit, the links you choose, your IP address and, if available, a user ID. Recall that in 2006, AOL released three month's worth of search data from 650,000 of its users. Given that the New York Times successfully discovered the identity of several people from their searches, there are valid privacy concerns here.
I found my Google addiction hard to break initially, and I had to change my browser's home page from Google.com to Startpage.com to stop myself relapsing all the time.
The first few days were the hardest, but things got easier.
Like Google, Startpage offers the ability to search for images and videos, as well as the usual web page links. A particularly useful feature offered by both search engines is the ability to highlight search terms within a view of the web pages themselves. It's a small thing, but for this I prefer Startpage because it not only highlights the terms with a different color, but also renders them in a larger font making them easier to pick out in a lengthy document.
StartPage's Search Term Highlighting
Both search engines provide the ability to customize search and display settings. Whereas Google stores your settings centrally, requiring you to login for them to be used, Startpage stores them on the client as an anonymous cookie. No account or login is required.
In terms of search features, both search engines provide a similar offering. But there is one more security feature, other than anonymity, where Startpage currently beats Google. That is the ability to use a secure HTTPS connection to the Startpage server, which keeps your search queries private from your ISP, or if you are at work, your employer. Although it should be noted that any website that you actually visit by clicking on the results cannot be kept hidden.
The interesting thing about Startpage, also known as IxQuick.com is that it's not actually a true search engine - it does not maintain it's own database of web pages. Instead, it farms out queries to a number of other search engines and web directories, and collates the results before displaying them to you. The technical term for it is a meta-search engine.
- All the Web
- Ask/Teoma
- Bing
- Cuil
- Digg
- EntireWeb
- Gigablast
- Open Directory
- Qkport
- Wikipedia
- Yahoo
It is even possible to customize which search engines contribute to the results and which do not. I didn't realize the significance of this at first, but I soon cottoned on to the fact that, with a meta-search engine, you can customize the kind of results you get by selecting a particular combination of inputs. So you could, if you wish, use Startpage as anonymous proxy for just the Bing search engine by disabling all the others. Unfortunately, however, this customization does not currently seem to be saved with your personal settings and does not persist when you close your browser. This is a real pity as it would be a powerful feature.
Ultimately what really matters to most people are the quality of the results. So how does it fair against Google?
Well, from my experience, pretty good actually. Overall, I find the quality of results similar. In some cases, both search engines return near identical results, while in others, they differ significantly in their content, but not in overall quality.
I find results from Startpage to be slightly better for searches of technical nature, while I find Google's image search to be superior to that of Startpage.
StartPage.com versus Google
On the plus side for Google, Google seems snappier - coming back quickly with results, while there is a slight, but noticeable, latency with Startpage. But given that performance is so close overall, I can only suggest that you try Startpage for yourself for a while and come to your own decision.
Meta-search engines are not new, and Startpage is by no means the only meta-search website out there. Others include: Zuula.com and DogPile.com. I chose StartPage because of its policy of not recording IP addresses.
So could Startpage, or meta-search engines like Startpage, ever be anything more than minor niche players? Could they ever challenge Google's dominance in search?
The way things stand at the moment, clearly the answer has to be "no".
Although the overall quality of the search results may well be similar to, or in some cases better than, those of Google, they are not sufficiently better to get people to switch in large numbers. Google just has too much inertia, not to mention resources. And while the privacy afforded by Startpage may be important to some, for most casual users, it doesn't even feature on their radar.
Personally, I would also have concerns over the reliance of meta-search engines on third-parties to do the real work. I wonder, for example, just how good the results would be if the ability to tap into big players such as Bing and Yahoo were denied?
Perhaps, however, the ability of meta-search engines to allow for customized results may come into its own in the future. And, given that privacy and security are taking on increasing importance for many people, perhaps Startpage in particular could successfully carve out a niche for itself.
For me personally, I really like Startpage and plan to continue using it. I'm going to try to go Google-free for a while, at least as far as search is concerned, although I'm not entirely confident that I'm ready to kick the habit just yet.
Update
Since originally doing this write up, I have also been trying out Cuil.com. Like StartPage, Cuil does not record your IP address or search activity. Unlike StartPage, however, Cuil is a search engine in its own right, rather than a meta-search engine.
I think it has a lot of promise, and I love how it presents results. With the cost of online storage and cloud computing falling, I can't help but wonder how much easier it will be for smaller companies to compete with Google in the future.
Copyright Andy Thomas 2009
Originally posted on: BigAngryDog.BlogSpot.com
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