Today, while I was searching the Internet using Yahoo Search, the technology returned me a weird error that revealed the unavailability of the search engine. To give you more information about the search process, I typed "yahoo singapore" in the search box and, after I pressed the search button, Yahoo returned me the following error: "We had temporary problems searching for web pages. Search again for yahoo singapore or type a new query above." There was no official announcement or notification of the unavailability, so that was quite unexpected.

Now, the same question appears again: is it possible to search the Internet without Google? You're probably asking yourself why I was trying to search the Internet with Yahoo since the search giant is surely the Mountain View company. Every once in a while, I use Yahoo as the default search engine to see the latest improvements or modifications made by the company. Let's suppose I use Yahoo once a week. I enter the official page of the company and search for something. The search engine returns me that error. Next week, the default search engine will surely be other than Yahoo.

Although this is not a downtime error, some of the users regard it as a period of unavailability. Recently, an interesting research revealed that Google encountered no more than 7 minutes of downtime in the first three months of this year. According to the study made by Pingdom, Google recorded a 99.73 uptime percent in 2007, earning the second position after Yahoo, its famous rival. At this time, Yahoo and Google are the most powerful rivals for the search technologies so, if this error is returned more often, the Mountain View remains a single competitor. Now excuse me, I want to search Google.