My sentiments, exactly! I'm not a web developer but I own and lead a consulting business and live and work in the mountains where it's far easier to interact and shop online than f2f. My partner here is a part-time web developer and operates her own webstore. We don't have TV and spend more time here in the mountains with animals than we do with people. So the internet is our primary means of connecting to the outside world - a vital part of our existence here! This means we take SE's very seriously, from the perspective of both an e-provider and an e-consumer. They are as much of a "lifeline" necessity for us as a telephone or a car.

I have found that the "leading" search engines are indeed far too cluttered and biased toward businesses that meet their criteria, not mine. So I found this article to be quite refreshing, because I too seek "search sites where it's uncluttered and quiet," far from the madding crowd. I do use the leading SE's on occasion, especially for simple online shopping or as the first stop before I dig deeper into a subject. But I have found that there are specialty search engines for almost every purpose, so I have become quite accustomed to using "the right tool for the job" when searching. The best list I have ever found listing SE's by specialty is on the Noodle Tools site: http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/li...iceengine.html

As a systems thinker and complex living systems consultant, I tend to favor visual search engines for research-focused searches. I can take in the entire field or "whole system" of all search returns on one screen, see the relationships between them, and see them categorized by affinity groupings. This is far more useful than the typical Google-style list, where I have to wade through pages and pages of random text to find what I'm looking for, and usually give up before I find what I'm looking for. These engines are listed on the Noodle Tools SE list under: "I need to visualize relationships among ideas". Among these three visual SE's, I tend to use Grokker the most. I prefer Kartoo's graphic interface over Grokker's but found that they return too many foreign sites (not surprising since they're based in France). This is handy when I want European info sources but not when I am trying to find English language or U.S.-based sources, which is most of the time. If you haven't tried a visual SE, I invite you to give one of these a try. If you're not used to using systems thinking tools, they could be a good learning tool for you. Systems thinking is the wave of the future for the whole systems we live and work in - organizations, economies, communities, societies, ecosystems, etc. So why not get comfortable with some tools that do a better job of helping us to visualize, understand, and work with the complexities that surround us?