Gmail baby

Michael in New Zealand, whom I don't think I've ever met (which is a shame, since we both seem to be film geeks), mentioned something about Google's Gmail in a comment. I think it's worth talking about. I don't happen to be the sort of person who NEEDS 1 gig of web-based email storage, even though I am the sort of person who allows his inbox to back up quite a bit. I suppose, were I to start swapping illegal barnyard porn, I might need that gig. But not now. That being said, it behooves us all to browse Gmail-is-too-creepy.com. (I think I must have seen the link through MetaFilter). It's from the people who assembled Namebase.org, and it has some fun stuff on it, like the photo of Sergey Brin in drag. The logical conclusion is that Gmail is actually a tool of the malicious one-worlder Illuminati in our Federal Government. Once they release the Yog Sothoth, Gmail users are the first to be physically devoured. And the manufactured buzz of the Invite thing, though effective, is kind of silly. Sounds like some PR rep wants another CV entry. It worked, because the curiosity of the regular user has definitely been piqued. Google itself is curious. It's the default search engine for an extremely large percentage of Internet users, yet it retains this 'secret weapon' air for so many people. In addition to upping their users' storage capacity to compete with the as-yet-unavailable Gmail, both Yahoo! and Microsoft will be releasing new search engines to compete with Google. Even though Merrill Lynch recently dropped out of underwriting the Google IPO (they're too big, there are plenty of underwriting partners, and it's not worth their trouble, the conventional wisdom goes), it's still shaping up to be the biggest Internet IPO in history. However, they also amended their IPO here and stuck in some concerns about the concerns about Gmail and privacy. The contrarian in me demands to know: what are the real secret weapon search engines out there? What's better than Google?