When you are looking for that special something, what site do you go to? For most people, the answer to that question is Google.com, of course. According to the Nielsen/NetRatings survey of 2007, 55.2% of all searches were on Google. And why not? Google has a fast-loading homepage and produces quick results, usually in less than a second. A search for "a" brought up 8,210,000,000 results in .12 seconds. Plenty to choose from. Google also 20 different features including image, video, and news search, along with free Internet e-mail that actually works. There aren't many Internet search engines that can compare. However, there are a few that can, and some that are, in ways, better.

Yahoo.com

One of the most widely-known search engines out there is Yahoo. Yahoo has an attractive homepage, which, while slower to load than Google's, certainly makes up for it in appearance. Searching for "a" again brought up 10,600,000,000 results in .35 seconds. For those that tell time in microseconds, this can seem like an eternity, but for the normal person, this is a mere pittance. Also, Yahoo displays related search topics, unlike Google. Also unlike Google, Yahoo has a side bar that displays sponsored results, instead of grouping them in with the regular results. Yahoo does have the standard image and video searches. Yahoo also has a content filter.

Going by perks not related to searching, Yahoo is better by far than Google. Google's e-mail service is still in its infancy, while Yahoo's is in its prime. Yahoo as a whole is far more attractive and better all-around than Google, making it one of the top picks for a Google alternative.

MSN.com

MSN.com may not be as widely known as a search engine as the other two, but its non-search related perks are better by far. As a search engine, it performed marginally. Searching for "a" brought only 2,563,056,066 results with no listed time. This is comparable to results from Ask.com, which isn't even in the same ballpark as these. The homepage is slow to load, with alot of graphics. It is still more attractive than Google's sparsely decorated page, but appears cluttered.

However, MSN has many more features than Google. Hotmail, MSN's e-mail service is better by far than any other that I have tried. It is almost fully customizable, from the color to the layout. MSN's news service is as good or better than Yahoo's, and is displayed on the homepage, unlike Google's, for which you have to click

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