Yahoo! as a Search Engine

I decided to try Yahoo! again today.

It has probably been most of a decade since I knowingly used Yahoo! to search for something.

There's something about a stupid name with an exclamation mark as part of it that grates on me. It's not even a fun, stupid name like Google. Of course, what is there to say about the other major search engine's name, MSN Search.

I'm looking at buying a Krups toaster oven. I saw one again yesterday and I've been contemplating returning to the store, Iq|Living on the Danforth. I may go look at the Bay to see if they have a sale on or something. This is a pricy unit.

Anyways, I thought I'd look around online to see if anybody had some useful information about the model. Using Yahoo's search engine, I searched for krups toaster oven. I visited the top three hits.

I'm appalled.

I cannot imagine such a useless service as what Yahoo provides. All three top hits were link redirectors. One of them was even a most-wretched page with a hundred links beneath a banner stating that the domain was available or something.

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In years gone by, all of the search engine 'portals' followed each other into oblivion. The first time I heard about google, I tried it. The lean, spare page was just for me. I've been using it ever since and whenever I set up someone's computer, I always configure their web browser to easily get to google. Sometimes, it's even set as the home page.

The recent news about google empowering chinese autocrats and censors troubles me. From what news has come out to the western world, I do not believe that you can consider the chinese government decent or tolerant or anything good for that matter. The state pushes the envelope these days when it comes to grinding down dissent.

Google is getting up on stage to stand side-by-side with the nameless autocrats of this tyrant state. Why would they do this? I guess they figure that somebody is going to take the market that China possesses. It can be them or it can be someone else. This isn't a choice that many corporations can consider as actually being a choice.

Perhaps I'll try Yahoo again in 2010. That will give them time to try and improve. I've already deleted the link to their site.