The problem with search today – and we all know that – is that we’ve all figured out that if you type less keywords, you get better results. That’s crazy. – Steve Ballmer
I agree with Mr. Ballmer. That is exactly the problem we have today. Part of the reason for this lazy behavior is Google. It has been a while since I saw some great search results from Google. Google sure spits out results which are relevant but not quite what we want. We need something beyond Google as we get more sophisticated.
These 3 search engines are not Google beaters or they are not trying to challenge Google’s dominance. But, they are 
different from what Google provides. I have already blogged about one such search engine – Kosmix.
WolframAlpha : Not yet open to public but this search engine with a weird name had made waves already. It is even scaring people for the level of accuracy and the depth of results it might provide. Though, I cannot comment further on this engine’s capabilities, the whole Internet is waiting for an alternative search engine and Wolfram could be it.
Scoopler : The real-time search engine. With the amount of content becoming available on the net every second, a real-time search engine is something we need. Twitter is not making our lives any easier. There is so much to know about but we don’t have a real-time search engine. Scoopler solves that problem. What took it so long to get a real-time search engine?
Newssift : This is a little different and more of a personal favorite. It is not complete and doesn’t yet provide the kind of results it should. A must try for business blogger’s. Newssift as the name suggests tries to get the company’s information across the world. When I searched for Reliance it gave me 5 options – all of them Reliance companies and the relevant articles as the search results. A very handy tool for people like me who needs to research few things for making the posts complete.
Google has introduced some new features which is almost after – I don’t know how many long years. New features from Google are also coming just before the launch of WolframAlpha.
It is high time the Internet has seen some competition in the search space. Yahoo and Microsoft has proven that they cannot really challenge Google. All we need is someone from the outside to come up with a better search engine.
There is a good chance that Google will gobble up the new search engine but you all know what they have done to Intel in Europe.
We dont know what we are missing till we see it. Before google we were OK with search and then google changed the dynamics of search. Can that happen again? I think yes. But can that happen fast and easy? I dont think so. With google owing 60% of the search market – its what Microsoft is to the desktop market.
Nobody would have believed 10 years back that someone could beat internet explorer, firefox did it in Microsoft’s own turf. It can happen to search also.