Anyone unhappy with Google can use other search engines - including DuckDuckGo and Blekko, along with Bing or Yahoo.

Competitors argue that Google rigs its search algorithms to demote listings for competing search engines. Many of the allegations of demotion come generally from sites of pretty questionable quality, such as Nextag and Foundem. Some of Google's primary competitors in 'specialized search' clearly place well in search results - Amazon and Yelp.

The way you want to be treated is a lot like how Google wants to be approached. Play nicely. Mean what you say. Don’t try to deceive. Share good stuff. Be authentic. Be precise with your words.

My guess is (it will be) about 300 years until computers are as good as, say, your local reference library in search.

Search engines compile a lot of data on what we search for and much of what we search for is personal. Many people fear that the government wants to do data mining. It'll be interesting to see how much of all this ultimately becomes a political issue.

Much of the lifeblood of blogs is search engines - more than half the traffic for most blogs.