Improving the unimprovable?

2 sites have recently launched that are challenging the search giant that is Google. Not by launching a competitor engine, but by offering improvements that enable users to customise their search results.

First up is Bingle – a new site that allows you to see Google and Bing results side by side.

The site was intended to serve those who were satisfied with Bing’s results but were afraid of leaving the much-trusted Google. Now, I can’t see it being much of a contender to either of the sites in the long term, but it is certainly an interesting tool that’s well worth a look at. Having performed quite a few searches on there, there is rarely much similarity between the top results. Unless you’re talking about a wikipedia entry, for example. If it does nothing more, the experiment shows you what a different internet we could see if we switched search engine every once in while, which I find pretty interesting.

Next up in the Google mashups, is Redesign Google : the site that allows you to design and download new Google backgrounds, to replace the standard interface Google serves up.

The bank of designs on the site are currently fairly limited, but hopefully this will change as the site is only recently launched. If you do see a design that catches your eye however, you can download it by clicking ‘get this look’ (currently only available in Firefox). The concept comes from Webmynd – an addon that lets you customise your search results, even allowing you to remove results you deem irrelevant.

Whether customisable search is something we actually want, remains to be seen. I’ve blogged before about how we don’t actually want a new Google and this is probably still the case. Do we just want Google to take all the hard work out of searching, for us? Is the simplicity of the interface what makes Google so good? Yahoo search died (for me) when the search box became a less and less important feature on the site and got hidden amongst the clutter of the Yahoo homepage. Customising search results can be interesting at the start. I’ve done it myself with a few addons, but they invariably get removed when the ‘fun’ is over and I just want my regular searching back.