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BURLINGAME, Calif.--There is life after Google--though the increasing number of search alternatives popping up around the U.S. are careful not to take the search giant head-on.

With three-quarters of all search traffic, Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) might seem unassailable. But potential competitors are busy developing new ways of finding information and hunting down the investors they need to support them. Last year, more than 50 new search companies raised $330 million in venture financing, according to MoneyTree.

So how are these aspiring search engines proceeding? Mostly, by not following the example of Cuil.com (pronounced "cool"). Cuil's name means "knowledge" in Gaelic, but it might as well stand for "cautionary tale."

The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company was founded by former Google executives and made a splash when it debuted last May by bragging of a search index three times the size of Google's. It got the expected traffic bump from curiosity seekers, but traffic quickly cooled off as people returned to Google. However better Cuil might have been than Google, it wasn't better enough to get users to make the switch.

In Pictures: 10 Search Engines To Watch

Lesson learned. "There's really not much point in building another search engine," says Anand Rajaraman, co-founder of Kosmix, one of the new, specialized search companies. Trying to out-Google Google, he says, "is the wrong attitude and the wrong approach."

The right approach, investors hope, is the sort of niche-oriented search offered by Like.com. The San Mateo, Calif.-based company started life in 2004 as a facial-recognition software, aiming to help users sort and tag their photos. But Chief Executive Munjal Shah revamped it for shopping. Give Like.com a picture of a product you like--such as a favorite watch--and its computers will find stores selling it, as well as suggest alternatives. The site is especially popular with women shopping for shoes.

Shah says Like.com was able to use roughly 80% of the code from the previous iteration of his computer vision technology, and is now forecasting $20 million in revenues this year, up from $10 million last year and $1 million the year before.

Rather than use pictures, another new search engine, Aardvark, asks questions. Pose it a query, and Aardvark looks through your extended social network, pulling information from sites like Facebook. The search engine finds those best in a position to field your question and asks them if they'd care to answer it. It then forwards whatever answers it gets.

To a reporter's question, "What's a good cure for writer's block?," Aardvark was able, in a couple of minutes, to come back with advice from Joe M. in New York: "Force yourself to write 3-5 paragraphs about a topic: Go to a book on your shelf, open to page 87. Paragraph 3, and the first noun and that will be your topic."

Aardvark says that over time, its software gets smarter about which users are the most likely to answer questions on which topics.

In contrast, Kosmix is trying to carve out a new niche by smartly combining results from other search engines. In response to a topic search, its computers automatically create a page full of information, pulled from big sites like Wikipedia and YouTube, as well as blogs, Twitter feeds and more.

Rajaraman and Kosmix Co-Founder Venky Harinarayan say their computers comb through 10,000 Web sites and applications. Want to research a trip to Hawaii? Kosmix can find you opinions from Twitter, a guide on Mahalo and the latest photos from Flickr, then display it all on one page ordered by relevance.

Users also see advertisements, of course; all of these sites plan on making money by selling ads or cashing in on affiliate referral fees.

The new mini-search engines are still a tiny part of search, estimated to have less than 2% of total search traffic. But Web traffic monitor Hitwise says they are growing rapidly. Kosmix has seen its market-share grow 730% year-over-year. On Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people )-owned Powerset, which answers questions asked in plain English, traffic is double from that of a year ago.

These companies sense an opening in part because Google searches continue to get longer, with users giving it more and more search terms in the hopes of finding ever-more detailed niche information.

Forrester Research analyst Shar VanBoskirk says it isn't a technology gap with Google that is holding these companies back. Rather, she said, they have to deal with the juggernaut of the Google brand. "The biggest problem I see facing any emerging search engine is the same problem facing Microsoft, which is critical mass of users," she says.

And even if the new search engines persuade users to try more than just Google, they still face the prospect of Google moving into their turf. Blog search used to be a separate market segment in search, with several companies battling to dominate. After Google added blog search to its main search menu, there was the predictable shake-out.

Of course, this also means that should any of these companies become a success inside their niche, they would become a Google acquisition target--which may be all the motivation any of them need. "I think it's fair to say that the conventional search game is over," says Kosmix's Rajaraman. "But that doesn't mean the Internet game is over."

Some people say recessions are inevitable; others say they are healthy, necessary to clean out the system and clear the way for the next expansion. Finally, while many blame greedy capitalists for pushing things too far, there are some who believe that the current recession is something we deserved (or earned) because so many lived beyond their means.

No matter what you believe, recessions are never fun. Beneath all the statistics and data are real people facing real challenges. The unemployment rate, now 6.7%, is headed to about 8% by late 2009. In the fourth quarter, real gross domestic product will drop the most since the brutal recession of 1981-1982, when, over the course of only two years, Paul Volcker reversed 20 years of inflationary monetary policy.

But it is not just the speed of the collapse that is so scary; it is that our current generation has little experience with economic pain. Between 1965 and 1982, the U.S. economy was in recession one out of every three years, inflation hit double digits and the unemployment rate peaked at 10.8%.

Since 1982, the U.S. has been in recession just one out of 16 years, the unemployment rate bottomed at 3.8% in early 2000 and then at 4.4% in early 2007. In other words, a wobbly economy today feels much worse to the average American and politician than it did 30 years ago.

So we have a real schizophrenia today. People are going to the mall for holiday shopping, parking hundreds of yards away and waiting in long lines to check out. But then these same people go to parties and argue about whether the Obama economic stimulus plan should be $500 billion or $1 trillion. It feels so bad that President Bush is justifying his economic intervention by saying that "I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system."

What's important to recognize is that even at the bottom of the current recession, sometime in mid-2009, the living standards of the typical American will still be amazingly high. In fact, even an aggressive contraction in real GDP will leave per-capita real GDP above 2005 levels.

Now, we did not have 8% unemployment back in 2005, but that kind of jobless rate is not unusual for recessions. The unemployment rate peaked at only 6.3% in the recession early this decade but peaked at 7.8%, 10.8%, 7.8%, and 9% in each of the previous four recessions, respectively, dating all the way back to the 1973-1975 recession.

The Federal Reserve is extending the life of key programs aimed at busting through credit clogs and restoring stability to financial markets.

The Fed says the programs, originally slated to last through Jan. 30, will be extended through April 30.

The Fed's emergency lending facility for investment firms is covered by the decision. Another program that lets financial institutions temporarily swap risky investments, such as shunned mortgages, for super-safe Treasury securities also is covered.

Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed

Life is one big negotiation--be it with your boss, spouse, customers or the used-car salesman.

Formidable deal makers like Warren Buffett, Bill Clinton and sports agent Scott Boras tend to be born, not made. But talk to negotiating pros from the worlds of government, finance and media, and they'll admit there is at least some science to this art--and there's no better time to master it than in a severe economic downtown.

Knowing, for instance, how to negotiate easier terms with suppliers can be the difference between conquest and carnage. "Vendors will be more lenient when it comes to negotiating financing options if they can lock you into a long-term contract," notes Gregg Bedol, business consultant with Red Zone Consulting in Atlanta. In this environment, Bedol recommends angling for friendlier financing on high-volume items like paper, ink and toner.

Winning every point in a negotiation is rarely an option, of course, but if you keep a few principles in mind, you can tilt things in your favor--whether you're signing a peace treaty or re-jiggering contracts.