Baby, you can drive my search

Anyone in the know regarding the Internet who still doesn't recognize the genius of Jakob Nielsen should read his current Alertbox column, "When Search Engines Become Answer Engines."

Search engines truly have become more important than the individual sites they catalog. I know how crippled I'd be in my daily online activities without Google. It doesn't make me want to hop on the phone to my stockbroker — if such I had — and buy stock in their spanking new IPO, but it does make me think that offering won't be the bust many of the financial pundits are predicting.

If you ever get Googled out, though, and want to try a different tool, give AlltheWeb.com a shot. It's a pretty fair second choice, and its handlers at Overture — now an arm of the Yahoo! empire — have managed (thus far) not to clutter up the interface with the text ads that make Google increasingly unattractive, if no less essential and effective. Overture also runs Altavista.com, which a few years back used to be one of the best pre-Google search sites on the Web.