Is it possible to un-google the Internet search habit?

If you want to search for something online, Google is most people’s obvious choice. We all know that Google totally dominates the Internet search engine domain. It will be a huge challenge for anyone to break the “Google habit”.

In spite of that, we also can’t overlook the growing problems of information overload in our web searches, and the fact that many other companies are constantly trying to come up with something better. There are a lot of things that Google search does not do or help the users with. Companies across the globe realize that there is a need for an alternative solution.

Business Week reported on how various companies are trying to come up with innovative tools and programs to offer a better search engine to the public and steal away some of that lucrative traffic.

• On May 15, i.e., tomorrow, Stephen Wolfram – a British mathematician is launching an online service that intends to provide more useful answers to search queries than the standard list of Web pages.
• IBM has designed a computer program to field questions well enough that it can compete on Jeopardy! with the game show’s best human contestants.
• Microsoft too is planning to re-launch its own search service this spring, although the details are still top secret.
• Twitter has just added a way to search all posts and has quickly become the go-to place to find out what’s happening in real time — from airplane crashes to the latest Apple rumors.

Many other start-ups are on the look-out for new areas of data that Google hasn’t yet captured.

Why do we see the emergence of “Google Killers”?

1. One of the main reasons could be the $20 billion search-related revenue that Google earns.
2. Companies worldwide can see that Google search has a lot of scope for improvement. People often get lost in the huge list of sites without getting to the information they were looking for in the first place.
3. Google themselves are working on figuring out what people are really searching for so that they could come closer to providing the right answer.

Will Google continue to stand strong?

1. Google searches not only show text links to the websites, but also maps, photos and other information.
2. Google recently came up with a technology to help understand the meaning of words and their associations with similar words.
3. Google is constantly trying to improvise and we should expect to see new things soon that could solve the user problems further.

So, what are your thoughts on this? Is it really possible to un-google the Internet search habit? Let us know what you think!