Are Google’s day’s numbered?

It’s time to reconsider Google | News.blog | CNET News.com

It really might be time for some people to reconsider Google – at least Google’s search and Google Maps. They are no longer so far ahead of the curve that it’s a no brainer to stick with them. The competition is picking up.

I’m not quite ready to switch myself, but if I lived in a region that was covered by online traffic updates, I’d probably go to Yahoo Maps. The functionality is so close to Google Maps that I don’t think I’d miss anything from Google, and they have a real-time traffic overlay that I really could have used today.
The article compares Ask.com and Google’s search results pages. In theory, I give Ask the edge, for the Widen & Narrow boxes down left of the page. That’s an excellent innovation. In practice, though, with the searches I used for testing I think I prefered Google’s results. Maybe if I was doing a different kind of search Ask might come up better, but I was just looking for online references to me. Google had more.

I haven’t tried anyone’s Desktop Search apps, but they do look good. I’ll check one of them out. A friend was just going on about how great they are the other day, so I’m already primed.

One thing that I haven’t seen anyone challenge Google on, though, is Google Earth. See my previous post for more on that. Very cool.

[tags]Google, Ask.com, Yahoo!, maps, search, competition, internet, desktop search[/tags]

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