No advertisement search engine sites

[morganj at iupui.edu]

I was reading the report of the first Search Engine conference, at
http://websearch.about.com/internet/websearch/library/blses99.htm
and saw in the Search Engines Speak panel that one company talked about
carefully separating its commercial operation from its indexing.  However
successful they might be, I began to think that libraries would benefit
from a Yahoo-like search service that wasn't powered by commercials, so
that users searching for travel information could see a list of services
without a blinking ad for one of them.

Encyclopedia Brittanica is apparently going this route, with an
educational version that has no advertising as well as a
commercial-supported free version. Are there major
services comparable to Yahoo, Alta Vista, etc. that pursue either a dual
or a no-commercial policy?

Jim Morgan
morganj at iupui.edu