Computers have become a way of life for people around the world. They are used to research term papers, check weather forecasts, track military progress, exchange ideas (blogs and chat) and to find the cheapest price on items etc. It is no surprise that as the computer age takes hold computer usage has increased. The number of websites that are being developed on the World Wide Web is growing at an ever increasing exponential amount. And because we live in a quick-fix society, with limited time on our hands, we need something to make surfing the web a lot easier, something that will sort out all this influx of information into a logical order.

Hence the wonder of search engines, which have transformed the meaning of search and has made our jobs easier. This paper focuses on search engine case studies around the world. Different search engine regions selected for research in this paper were: American, European, Canadian, Australian and the UK.

American Search Engines

Introduction

As of January 1, 2004 the estimated human population of the United States of America was 292,287,428 and there were 164,100,000 computers (1). An estimated 90,000,000 households have access to internet (2). With this many people surfing the web, curiosity might cause one to wonder about the search engines being used in America. Two of the most popular and well known search engines in America are Google and Yahoo. Although most people have a preference to one or the other search engine it is difficult to say one is truly better than the other as the quality of search is similar. According to some users, Google is the most powerful search engine in the world (3). However, others users argue that between the two search engines,