The engine of a train leads the cars and passengers to their desired destinations. Internet "Search Engines" and "Web Browsers" are computer programs that help users locate and travel to Web sites that contain items of interest or desired information. A few of the more commonly used search tools are listed below.
 
Search Engines

  • Alta Vista
  • Ask Jeeves - Ask Jeeves is a question-answering system allowing anyone to search the Internet for answers to questions written in plain, simple English.
  • Excite
  • Gateway.net - Example of an Internet Portal offering a variety of services
  • Google - Google's index, comprised of more than 1 billion URLs, is the first of its kind and represents the most comprehensive collection of the most useful web pages on the Internet.
  • Google Groups - “Google Groups contains the entire archive of Usenet discussion groups dating back to 1981. These discussions cover the full range of human discourse and provide a fascinating look at evolving viewpoints, debate and advice on every subject from politics to technology. Google's search feature enables users to access this wealth of information with the speed and efficiency of a Google web search, providing relevant results from a database containing more than 700 million posts.” (http://groups.google.com/googlegroups/help.html)
  • HotBot
  • Mamma - This site allows you to search many search engines at the same time and find what you are looking for quickly and easily.
  • MetaCrawler - Metacrawler is a meta-search engine that searches the Internet's top search engines such as About, Ask Jeeves, FindWhat, LookSmart, and Overture. With one single, powerful search engine, you get the most comprehensive results. When you use Metacrawler, you are actually searching many search engines simultaneously.
  • MSN.com - Another Internet Portal
  • Northern Light - Search service that provides both free World Wide Web data and Special Collections of query results for a nominal fee.
  • WebCrawler - Another meta-search engine searching seven of the top search engines.
  • Yahoo

Browsers

  • Microsoft Internet Explorer
  • Mozilla - “Mozilla is an open-source web browser and toolkit, designed for standards compliance, performance and portability. Mozilla.org provides binaries for testing and feedback.”
  • Netscape

Misc. Research Tools

  • iTools - Offers access to dozens of searchable resources via a single Web page! Includes several dictionaries, thesaurus, acronyms, quotations, French and Japanese translators, French conjugator, anagrams, King James Bible searches, world map searches, CIA World Factbook searches, U.S. Area Code and 800 number directory, Global Currency Converter, Stock Quotes and Symbol Lookup, Zip Code locator, and tracking of UPS and FedEx packages