Is it needed to use other search engines besides Google sometimes ?

On January 3 2013, after a long and high-profile 20-month investigation from Federal Trade Commission (FTC), tech giant Google finally escaped the investigation without paying a fine. The FTC’s investigation focused on allegation from rival companies which accused Google of favoring its own sites and services in search results page while burying links to competing sites. The FTC said it found no evidence Google used unfair tactics to defeat competing sites.

Although Google got a win in this investigation, the company still faces a similar antitrust investigation in the European Union, which is launched as far back as in May 2012. One of The EU’s concerns also centers on Google’s practice to manipulate search results to display links to it’s own vertical search services differently than it does for links to competitors. The decision on this case and settlement haven’t been made by now.

Apparently, in these years Google is developing more websites and services and placing the links to those services at the top of the search engines above links to non-Google websites in hopes of boosting ad revenue. But the moves mean Google increasingly is at odds with websites that rely on search engine for visitors. Those companies say their links are being pushed lower on the results page to make room for Google sites. As a result, many small businesses have seen dramatic drops in traffic that previously flowed through Google. Critics include executives at travel site TripAdvisor.com, health site WebMD.com. In a WSJ op-ed piece of Nexttag CEO Jeffrey Katz on June 8 2012, he accused Google of behaving like a monopoly: Google needs to become more transparent when advertisers get better placement in its organic search results. Katz also argues that Google use sophisticated algorithms weighted in favor of its own products and services at the expense of search results that are truly most relevant, especially when it launched its product listing ads in conjunction with Google Shopping, with pushing other results further down the page.

Dave Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, wrote in a blog statement after the settlement with FTC: "The conclusion is clear: Google's services are good for users and good for competition." But despite the Google’s practice towards other small websites, considering that some of search results are manipulated in a particular way, it’s hard to say current situation is good for users.

Google ,at the end of the day, is a company, is free to do what it wants to pursue growth opportunities. Just like Google, searchers also have right to search on any platform. Whether do more searches on Bing or Yahoo, or go to Meta Search Engines like Googlebye.com to get results from three main engines at the same time. While Google can offer good quality results which fit your need most of the time, you could need to give a try to other engines for more objective and different results sometimes.