Life without a search engine
I had a discussion with one of my friends on methods how Internet works for me. This discussion started with thesis that URL is more for technical people. That was in consequence answer to a question: why people start browsing from search engine even for known pages and relatively known addresses.
Somewhere in that conversation I shouted that I almost do not use search engine, only occasionally when I definitely need to search for something I can’t find the other way. Never on a regular way to find “anything”.
This triggered big questioning mark on my friend’s face and big “How?!” reply.
Well short and quick answer I could provide was that I’m a power user with very well defined needs. Search is one of them but only on-demand basis rather than regular access point to the Internet.
So how can I marginalize search engines while browsing and live these days?
It started with a dramatic reflection that Internet is full of garbage and 99% of it is just useless crap I don’t need. I started to split my needs into categories like: looking for knowledge (educational), looking for recent news in areas I’m interested, communication and participating in communities then undefined, occasional search for a keyword that for any reason popped up in my mind.
With that exercise I eradicated “just to waste some time” need, so “I’m feeling lucky” feature is not for me anymore.
For communication and communities it’s easy, Facebook simplified the thing to the very end. Adding Twitter and additional clients for both I have my connections and chasing for news managed.. somehow. Getting recent information cannot be solved at its full extend as it only depends on your contacts recommendations. It’s incomplete.
So for my areas of focus I have I found 9-12 top sites that are my news and new knowledge hubs as information on web sites is very well connected, usually I can follow one site after another without any single try on search. After a while I’ll be rather bored or completely happy with the information already gathered. These sites are speed dialed and thumbnails to these pages appear on my browser’s main window.
Not to get overwhelmed, sites like tweetmeme.com and techmeme.com are blessings more powerful than Google itself. With these sites I realized that in 2010 information stored in the Internet is much better connected by communities than Index Servers maintained in big data centers of Microsoft and Google.
I also found that for community-driven information that’s connected, search engine like Ice Rocket seems to be more attractive than anything else.
This way I surprised that friend I have mentioned, because usually I find myself free from Google and free from massive search usage on my daily browsing routine.
It’s really fantastic experience because when you start feeling it, then on a question “what can possibly kill Google’s dominance in the Internet” you find simple answer – that what has created the Internet as we see it. Which is us – the communities.
With information so well connected outside search engine, I find Twitter and Facebook as the biggest threat guys in Mountain View probably perceive and they should. These relatively new services in Web 2.0 sphere have already marginalized my search usage and I assume that they can only grow.