I have been trying to use alternatives to Google, when searching things online. Why? It's not that I dislike Google. It's that I always tend to favor the underdog. It's some kind of instinct, almost. I try to be anti-follow-the-crowd.
So, although I despise Microsoft in some respects, especially their Windows consumer franchise (can someone please repair Vista? why does my computer crash several times a week under Vista, but never crashes when I boot under Windows Server 2003, and only crashes rarely under Ubuntu?), lately I've been making an actual effort to try using their newly branded search engine, Bing.
What a joke. Today I was doing some searching on something Bing is supposed to be good at, according to the reviewers: shopping. I've been thinking of buying some "gadgets" before leaving Korea, to best take advantage of my hoard of Korean cash. So I was trying to research camcorders and netbook and small notebook computers. Hahaha. The entire first page of results when I typed in "camcorder comparison shopping" were links to Google directory pages! Which, in my personal experience, are useless for actually finding anything out.
Well, at least we know that Microsoft isn't skewing results to proprietary sites. But, still… how could they allow this to happen?
Anyway, back at Google, I had much better luck finding some comparison buying guides, etc.