Gallery: Top 10 alternatives to Google Search
But it's not the only game in town: newcomers are pushing alternative models promising to tame the internet using crowd sourcing and "computational knowledge engines."
So is it time to give the big G the heave-ho? Here's silicon.com's round-up of the best of alternative search engines out there, starting with Twitter Search.
Twitter Search
When Google is just too slow, why not tap into the fast moving wisdom of the Tweet cloud?
The Twuniverse proved its worth as a primary news source earlier this year, when Twitpic threw up the first pictures of the US Airways jet that crashed into the Hudson River in New York.
Biz Stone and the other creators of Twitter have tapped into the potential use of the site as a search engine able to deliver information almost instantaneously, adding a trending topics panel to Twitter's front page. As a result, Twitterers can now discover which stories have momentum building around them in real-time.
Refinements like TwitterWhere add the ability to search for tweets in a specific area, allowing you to home in on trends and breaking news in a particular geography.
Captions: Nick Heath silicon.com. Andy Smith ZDNet also contributed to this gallery.
Screenshot: Twitter
Screenshot: Twitter
Kosmix taps into a raft of web 2.0 content, sucking in feeds from Wikipedia, Flickr and YouTube as well as blog and forum postings. It's definitely an interesting choice if searching for a topic rather than a particular website.
Screenshot: Kosmix
Screenshot: Kosmix
Cooliris delivers results from popular photosharing sites such as Flickr and Picasa, video portals such as YouTube and Blinkx and online TV sites such as Hulu. It can even search for products on sites such as Amazon.
Scrolling through results is simply a case of flicking the 3D photo wall with the mouse, in a similar manner to the Cover Flow system used by Apple's iPhone.
Screenshot: Cooliris
Screenshot: Cooliris
However, Microsoft's latest Google killer also promises several features that Redmond would like you to believe will trump the search incumbent.
For certain types of searches, such as for products or hotels, it will display additional information in the results page, including user reviews and pricing.
Users can also refine results into categories and view video thumbnail previews.
Early signs are promising, with Bing pulling in 16 per cent of the global search market, putting it ahead of Yahoo!'s 10 per cent, according to internet monitoring company StatCounter.
Screenshot: Bing
Screenshot: Bing
Instead, it's designed to provide facts and figures, on anything from a country's gross domestic product to the frequencies of Christian names throughout history.
It processes more than 10 trillion pieces of data, producing results in the forms of data tables, definitions and graphs of comparative figures.
In its current form it is strong on answering scientific queries, providing numerical data and solving mathematical problems. It falls down however when asked for simpler everyday queries such as 'where's my nearest Chinese restaurant' or 'what's the best fertilizer for roses'.
Future plans for the engine include expanding its knowledge base to a wider range of everyday popular and cultural knowledge.
Screenshot: Wolfram Alpha
Screenshot: Wolfram Alpha
Simply highlight and right-click on a word to search a range of online stores, check the meaning of the word, find its location on a map, translate it into tens of different languages or even immediately post the highlighted text to your Twitter account or blog.
The embedded search engine runs queries against a range of popular sites such as Wikipedia, Amazon, eBay, Facebook and of course Google.
Screenshot: Hyperwords
Screenshot: Hyperwords
The brainchild of self-styled web entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, Mahalo uses a team of editors to build pages of information around popular search terms such as the BBC.
Such pages offer a slew of well-organized and interesting content including encyclopaedia entries, videos, news stories, photos and facts.
For less mainstream content, no dedicated pages exist and instead Mahalo pulls in a mixture of URLs, pictures, comment entries and video, from a range of different sites including Flickr, YouTube and Twitter.
Screenshot: Mahalo
Screenshot: Mahalo
Results are broken down into categories at the side of the page and also feature short summaries and pictures.
Cuil isn't likely to have Google worried any time soon though: a search for silicon.com produces our site as the second result on the page, amid a lot of sites on the microprocessor ingredient and Silicon Valley.
Screenshots: Cuil
Screenshot: Cuil
Basically a tailored form of crowd sourcing, Hunch trains its search algorithms to answer future queries using users' responses to a series of multiple choice questions - helping it learn that people who are vegetarian will never choose a steak restaurant when dining out, for instance.
Unfortunately more training seems to be in order, as its recommendation for the best bunch of flowers for a loved one was a bouquet of scarlet pimpernels, commonly regarded as a weed.
But it's early days - the site was launched yesterday - and the machine learning tech should ensure it improves given more time and more users' answers.
Screenshot: Hunch
Screenshot: Hunch
Screenshot: Hunch
Screenshot: Hunch
The engine even allows users to stream mentions of a search term as they happen in a real-time window, similar to updates on Twitter.
Omgili recommends using the site to find consumer opinions or to find answers to technical problems.
Screenshot: Omgili
Screenshot: Omigli