Anyone know of a lesser-known but ad-free search engine? I'll need it when I start seeing ads on Google.

http://www.altavista.com/

I avoid sites with the dancing ads. I don't go to weather.com nearly as often as I'd like precisely because their pages are covered in those ads. The animation is crappy, the figures don't move naturally and they're disturbing as a result.

I have noticed who uses them in their ads and will make a point of not using those services.

they block the page from firing off the flash or jscript animations, replace them with a button so you can turn them on my hand. They screw with some pages like Salon's own Yahoo ad page but for the most part you can bypass the crud. On the other hand my Safari is so fast that the animations don't slow it down. Opera is very fast as well.

You can down load the Adblock Plus extension + automatic updates (G Filter) and block ALL ads on every page (or nearly so, at least). It's been a long time since I've had more than the most minimal ad intrusion on a web page.

I've never once clicked on one one of Google's "sponsored links" and, in particular, the ones on the right side of the screen I barely even notice. So this will no effect on me, but if Google can sucker companies into giving them more money for the advertising, I say all the power to them.

And you better not. Else we have to pull your Che T-shirts and revoke your membership in the revolution.

how long did you think it would take? it's one thing to be the new web search powerhouse, but when you become a great big giant corporation with shareholders to be responsible to, there's only one thing that always happens--you find the shortest route between your company and the next dollar you make.

Farhad, thanks for the shout-out to my hobby blog, adverlicio.us re. the source of your LowerMyBills ad! I appreciate it.

For the curious, we archive online ads for research, inspiration, and discussion -- over 8,000 all tagged and searchable. Nike, Apple, Google, Target, Virgin, and even ads from political campaigns :-)

http://adverlicio.us

PS -- Irritating as they may be, we've collected almost 100 examples of ads from LowerMyBills. As the NYT revealed, they're actually remarkably effective as a lead generation tool. So, perhaps they should be admired on some level!

http://adverlicio.us/lowermybills