There has been so much media recently around Yahoo dropping Google as their search provider and Google's forthcoming announcement of an IPO. Over at Tech Review(MIT, subscription required). Wade Roush has done a great analysis of the market and potential tools that revolve around search beyond Google and beyond the web. I'll be interested to see how these new competitors measure up over time.

Search Beyond Google, by Wade Roush (March 2004)

I guess all of this excitement reminds me of my time at Altavista 4 years ago. Google was just starting to overshadow us. Funny enough Altavista is now in the hands of Yahoo and Google is the darling of the search industry.

Products mentioned in the article: Mooter, Dipsie, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Altavista, AskJeeves.