Chapter 14: Alternatives to Google

In This Chapter

Getting compact, bare-bones results
Finding newly added sites with GooFresh
Experiencing the astounding and addictive TouchGraph
Google via e-mail
Understanding and tracking the Google dance
Using the amazing Google Ultimate Interface
Proximity, relational, and host searching from Staggernation.com
Chatting with Google through IM
Flashing Floogle
Instant recipe searches
The bucolic Boogle

Most of this chapter strays outside Google, yet remains within. Googles are sprouting up all over the place. These alternative Google interfaces are not endorsed by Google, for the most part, and don’t enjoy any official relationship with Google, the company. But every search engine described in this chapter enjoys a close relationship with the Google index, which disgorges its treasures to any developer with the know-how to program into it.

Think of this chapter as a big, unofficial Google Labs, whose experiments are transpiring on the desktops of individuals and small companies. We, the lucky users, get to try them out. And let me tell you something startling: A few of these things are better than the original in certain ways. Google’s innovative power resides in the index and the intelligence algorithms that power it. But as an interface design company, Google is more efficient than elegant, more brusque than thorough. If these characteristics can be called weak spots, they represent an opening for resourceful programmers.

For this chapter I selected sites that are free to use, mostly easy, and worth whatever small efforts are required. Some of these alternatives to Google concentrate on delivering a single Google service better (or differently) than Google does. One of them ropes together almost all of Google’s engines into one glorious interface.

Google offers a free license to software developers to access the Google Web index. This license enables alternate Google sites to deliver Google search results through new interfaces. Developers download a software kit that includes the Google Web API (Application Programming Interface). An API is necessary whenever one program or Web site hooks into a necessary underlying system, such as Google or the Windows operating system. If your computer runs Windows, every application program you have uses the Windows API. Similarly, every alternate Google interface uses the Google API.

Developers using the Google API also must obtain a Google license key, which is used every time somebody conducts a search through the alternate site. Without “seeing” the license key (which is just a string of letters and numbers), Google will not perform the search.

All this might seem irrelevant if you’re not planning to develop a new Google search site. But anybody can get a license key, even people with no intent to program. The license key is separate from the developer’s kit. And it’s a good idea — even good manners — to own a free license key. The reason is that each license key allows the owner a certain number of searches per day. That number is currently set at 1000, which might seem like a lot. But in a public site, a daily quota of 1000 searches can be used up quickly, disabling the site for other users until the next day. So many sites in this chapter provide a space for entering your license key. By doing so, you “pay” for your own searches out of your quota. (All this is completely free of charge, of course.)

You don’t need to download a developer’s kit to get the license key; you merely need to create a Google account in the Web APIs section:

Go to the Google Web APIs page here:

www.google.com/apis
Scroll down to Step 2, Create a Google Account, and click the create a Google Account link.
Create a username and password.

If you’ve already created a Google account for Google Answers (Chapter 7) or Google Groups (Chapter 4), click the Sign in here link and use the username and password you established then. You must sign in (or create a new account) from the Google Web APIs page before Google sends you a license key.
Click to check the box accepting the Terms of Service.
Click the Create My Google Account button.

If you create a new account this way, and if you sign into an existing Google account through the Web APIs page, Google sends your license key to your e-mail address. The e-mail includes the Terms of Service for the Web API program, which are distinct from the Terms of Service you agreed to when creating a Google account.

The license key contains more than 30 characters, so obviously you shouldn’t try to memorize it. Keep it in a safe place in your computer, ready to copy and paste into alternate Google sites that request it.

Remember

If you have a Google license key (see the “Getting the Google license key” sidebar), have it handy as you cruise among the sites in this chapter. Very few alternate Googles insist on a bring-your-own-license policy, but some request that you “pay” your own way, and others surreptitiously position an entry box for the key number with the hope that you’ll use it. It is polite to other users to put your searches on your own key’s quota, thereby saving the site from burning quickly through its own quota and shutting down until the next day.

Onward, then, into realms of Googleness that you never dreamed of!

Google For Dummies

Chapter 14: Alternatives to Google

In This Chapter