I don't think I'd miss google at all. The big difference between google and baidu was that at least google told you when they were censoring results. But, that doesn't add much practical value.
biggest question is what are they using instead of wikipedia and how do i get some stock in that company?
I think the idea behind google's searching algorithm is cool and that's why I started to use it initially many years ago. But now, if you used bing or Yahoo! instead, are you really going to notice a quality difference in searches??? I've tried searching for several different terms and all the search engines pretty much come up with the same things. Google is a great brand.. and I think that more than any of its technology stuff is why people flock to it. Their marketing people are geniuses.
google is a distinct second in China for search engines anyway. The homegrown chinese search engine is >75% market share holder.
If you think the only thing googles done in the past 10 years is search-- This: http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/ is why people flock to google. Most, if not all, of that stuff is free.
Altavista, which used to have a half-decent video and audio search. Or kick it old school with GNN Webcrawler (aka "Whole Internet Catalog").
