Thank you for asking this question. I think that learning about good alternatives to google could help decrease our dependency towards this search engine. However, I doubt that there is a search engine that provide as much value as Google does.
Google is the best search engine. But instead of google, AOl and search.com is the good search engine.
Google is one of the best search engines in all around the world because it is so friendly and give more facility. And its is also fast growing searching engine.
i recommended MSN, because, I've been using Bing over Google since it first came out approx 99% of the time, my anticipated results are on the first page. When Bing fails I try Google, but it never brings back results that Bing can't bring back.
I can suggest Safari search engines and Opera, they are also a great search engines because most of developers now use that two search engines for testing a websites aside from mozilla and google.
Google brings the traffic so of course google is number one but thats also bad they have so much power