Search engine alternatives to Google (if you dare)

As we all know, Google is synonymous with search engines (as well as a host of tons of great apps), but we thought it’d be interesting to take a look at some useful alternatives out there. We bypassed some obvious ones such as Yahoo! in an effort concentrate on some of the small(er) guys. So here’s a quick run down with some of our thoughts…feel free to leave us comments with your favorites!

Fun & Useful

ChaCha seems to be focusing more on mobile search functionality (something we remember using quite a bit through Google’s mobile service a year or two ago). Both the Web and mobile services seem to work well–nothing special or unique. Maybe they’ll need to elaborate on their branding to incorporate a cha cha dancing spokesperson.

ChaCha

Fun But Not Too Useful

Ms. Dewey is basically a mix between Burger King’s Subservient Chicken and a search engine, but with a hot librarian instead of a chicken. Tell her what you’re looking for and she’ll either have a clever comeback or she’ll bother the hell out of you until you type.

www.msdewey.com

Fun & Useful

While we considered not including this one, Dogpile is actually pretty unique as it combines all the major search engines into one: Google, Yahoo!, Live Search and Ask.com. It seems they embraced the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” philosophy quite well.

Dogpile

Great Visuals But Not Too Useful

Viewzi is quite an ambitious search engine, as its purpose is to display search results “in a new and highly visual way.” There are quite a few different “views” in which you can display your results, but we found it to be a little clunky and time consuming. Search, after all, needs to be fast and effective. Perhaps it will be more useful if it’s streamlined after Beta.

Viewzi

Simple But Unfinished

We like the simplicity and starkness of the homepage for the Cuil search engine, but there’s simply not enough under the hood. The search results are laid out in a visually-appealing way, and there’s a useful “Explore by Category” feature, but the quality of results are not on par with some of the big players. With more work, however, Cuil seems to have great potential.

Cuil