My day without google.
Today, April the 1st is my day without google.
It is April fools day, but it also the day of the world-wide attempt to at least try other search engines.
My search engine of choice is yahoo.co.uk, for two simple reasons: a) it is the next option down by default in firefox 2/3, and b) yahoo! is the home of my favourite webmail client*.
So far my day without google has been quite good; I have checked all my rss feeds with google reader, read my email on gmail, routed chat and twitter through google talk and I'm writing this post in google docs.
But I have searched two things on yahoo!² Both of which were microchips used in a lab this morning.
**********
Jesus Christ the person sitting beside me in this lecture stinks! he keeps making disgusting noises with the contents of his nostrils too! Damn boy blow your nose!... actually I could offer him a tissue.
I did. He has some. He blew. I'm calm. Even the smell has gone.
**********
Anyway: I found both of the microchip datasheets I was looking for this morning, which was no great surprise.
So when it comes down to it every search engine except Windows Live Search is pretty much the same: you tell it what you want and it finds it for you³.
As far as I am concerned search engines are interchangeable, I am using firefox and will use whatever search engine is set... I may keep yahoo there, for all the difference it makes.
But that is not to say I can do without google as I feel is clear from my actions today I am reliant on google, Its rss reader is my homepage, it is among my webmail clients and one of my less popular Instant messenger accounts. I absolutely love google docs, although I do miss office functionality like sub- and super- script and headings. Also the lack of check as you go spell check functionality is irritating.
(Even more so in Ubuntu, where firefox's spell check as you type actually works properly and highlights the mistakes: which is great, but both google docs and firefox respond when you right click. Which makes a bit of a mess).

So here I am, on my day without google, using docs.google.com to write a post which I will post to google-owned blogger, then hassle my friends^ over google talk to go read it and provide some sort of feedback (or at least faint, disinterested encouragement). That done I will go back to paying vague attention to college and checking back on www.google.ie for googles annual April fools day joke.
It's quite irritating to have to wait until Silicon Valley and San Fransisco wakes up, to see the gag. Especially when I know that I pass by googles massive European headquarters on my train to college every morning.


This article is a response to this drive to use an alternative to google.

*I know the big advertisements are annoying, but generally I like yahoo, it has a nice solid feel to it, can use right-click, has infinite email storage space etc.
²If the exclamation mark is part of yahoo!'s name (and I'm fairly certain it is) does that mean I should have written it with two of them? "But I have searched two things on yahoo!!"? Would that have made sense?

³When you tell Windows Live Search what you want it finds you something different, or something it wants you to use.

^All three of my friends that I hassle into reading my new posts use google talk. You know who you are... and so do they....