I have found search engine heaven in the form of Goosh.org.

Basically, it is a UNIX-shell-styled google page, that returns listings to the “standard output” of the page.

The Goosh, or Google Shell

The beauty of it is that Google’s page has always been so simple and elegant, but Goosh takes these to the next level, making searching the web as easy as administering a Linux server, uh, sort of.

There are simple shell-like commands that you can use to manipulate the search in different ways:

web [keywords] – google web search (default if no command given)
images [keywords] – google images search
wiki [keywords] – Wikipedia search
news [keywords] – google news search
blogs [keywords] – google blog search
feeds [keywords] – google feed search
video [keywords] – google video search
place [keywords] – google maps search
translate [lang1] [lang2] <words> – goog
le translation

Those commands are modes, and you can use the “cd” command to change the default behaviour.  So, if you need a translator, simply type:

Sample of site content

cd translate

and you have a nice translator.

Other commands available include:

open <url> – open a URL in a new page
in (site) [keywords] – in-site searches
lucky [keywords] – the “Feelin’ Lucky” button

The best part, though, is this command:

addengine

This command adds Goosh to Firefox (or Icecat, in my case!) so that you can use it as your default search engine!  A simple Ctrl-K will put me in the search box, and Alt-Enter opens the results in a new tab.

I think this will be a great addition to the Google Application Suite someday, kind of like a Crazy Uncle Ned or something!

/cs