Back in the 9-0z, it was ALL about the Yahoo! search engine. They really had the "portal" system down, with local portals that had local classifieds, it was really cool (I bought a killa' fish tank off it once). Then they dumped that around 1999 and since then they've really blown.
After that, Google became the default winner. Clean interface (most of the time) and seemed like they had more results.
Now it's 2011, Google results are stale as a 10 day old bagel (I get WIKI answers every time, and try to search for software...it's the same shareware sites). Their instant answers technology is horrible (I had to edit my Hosts file just to get rid of it), and their portal system stinks. Top that off with people's head spinning around as they tell you about Google, and I'm searching for a new search engine.
I recently switched to Bing. It's got that "high-pro-glow" look/results as the "other two", which is cool (I guess). Hate the intro screen though...that wallpaper thing is LAME. You can get around it by using the IE toolbar, but toolbars are pretty lame too.
Also okay (by my standards) is MetaCrawler. But, it's only returning results from the "big 3" so that's pretty lame...though I like the name.
Other search engines, well, they're all pretty much cobranded versions of the "big 3" now. Whoppee! Go get a Android kazoo and celebrate everyone!
What I really need to know is: How do you get these "Big 3" search engines from NOT searching your site? That's a serious waste of bandwidth, and I don't need no gosh-darn go-ggley-bots searchin' my site every time I turns my back, do I? You stays off my property!
What really needs to occur is for hosts like X10 (or Leap Frog) to cross the media platform and develop search engines for their mainframes. It's a great selling feature to clients and will only increase traffic to your mainframes, which then (with some clever marketing) will result in higher revenues and more exposure for your clientele.
The End