Hi there,
Im an engg. student and need to surf the net very often for the last year project. Ive an institutional account (ERNET) and Im behind a firewall. Earlier I used to search with Altavista but It used to be so slow with the ERNET account that I had to wait for 4 to 5 min. for the search to get complete.
Google has done a great job. No ads. No yanky posters. just a text-box. Thats it. Very simple and Powerful. And the statistics are shown for the completion of the search. No doubt Googles gonna rule the race of search engines for atleast the next 2 years.
Also, since we are behind a firewall we are prohibited from the prono sites :) (students ERNET account). Google does a great deal of job of offering the so called most wanted sites straight in. :))
The Bottom Line
1) Fastest Search ever.
2) Good and strongly recommended Affiliate Programs.
3) Easy to use.
4) Huge Cache.
Google Rules!!