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Leaving Google?
January 25th, 2012 by Mierka
So you may have already heard about Google’s changing privacy policy and the resulting lack of privacy it will be giving you as an internet user. If you feel uncomfortable with this change but feel that abandoning Google would make the internet way more time consuming. This is the first in a small series of blog posts on alternate services around the internet that don’t have the same level of access to your information as Google.
Today I’m going to discuss search engines.
Before Google became the number one search engine, there were lots of search engines online. There still are today. While alternate search engines may not come up with as many results as Google, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It means you will have less to wade through in your quest for information.
For regular searches: www.yippy.com and www.dogpile.com
Yippy (previously Clusty) is a cluster search engine. This means when you search for “dogs” you will get search results and definitions in the center, and on the left side you will see a box with “clouds” that are related to your search for dogs like rescued dogs, training, and pets. The box on the left side also allows you to narrow your search by sources, url suffixes, and how recent the result is.
Dogpile has been around since the beginning of search engines and has continuously upgraded its utility and style. Its format is similar to Google so it is user friendly, and it is a meta search engine which means it searches through multiple search engines at once to find the most relevant results. It also will provide search suggestions on the right side of the page once you enter your search (the equivalence of Google’s “Did you mean?”) Plus you get the bonus of an adorable cartoon puppy at the bottom of your search results.
Going online shopping: www.thefind.com
The Find is without question extremely better for online shopping than Google Shopping. Very user friendly and much more effective. I can’t even begin to explain how useful it is so take a second to check it out.
Making dinner: www.foodieview.com
FoodieView contains a recipe search engine that covers loads of recipe sites beyond allrecipes. It also allows you to browse by categories so that’s already a step up from Google.
Torrents: GOTCHA!
Illegal downloading is against University of Maryland Policy. Neither I nor the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library accept or encourage illegal file sharing of any kind. Please read UMD’s file sharing FAQs at http://www.oit.umd.edu/PlayFair/FAQs.html
Instead of downloading, use http://www.umd.edu/iTunesU/ for your listening needs.
Posted in Electronic Resources, Announcements, Web site, Research Skills
