A Microsoft executive recently compared quitting Google to quitting smoking. As I approach the 10th anniversary of my last cigarette, I decided to put that to the test.

If it weren't for hyperbole, of course, marketing wouldn't be nearly as effective. But Google's presence across the Web does provoke that sort of response from competitors and even friends. From search and Google Maps to Gmail and YouTube, it can be difficult to steer clear of the Google experience during a daily trip around the Internet.

But it's not impossible, and it's not even remotely comparable to giving up one of the most addictive drugs on the planet. During a week in which I pledged to avoid using anything made, owned, or otherwise produced by Google, it was surprisingly easy to cut ties.

Google is a habit; smoking is an addiction. And for the most part, Google lives up to its pledge to avoid locking users into its system. I only missed a few Google products during a week in mid-February and mostly because I was unfamiliar with their substitutes.

That's because (with apologies to Steve McCroskey) I could have picked a better week to quit using Google. Between buying a house, planning a wedding, and a trip to Lake Tahoe, my normal routine was already out of whack. And the launch of Google Buzz meant I had to break my pledge on occasion to stay on top of the changes Google made to that service.

But if you're one of those people freaked out by Google and its expansion across the Web, fear not: you have a wealth of options.

Search
This was perhaps the easiest product to avoid. I'm a Mac user who primarily uses Firefox as my default browser. Switching to another search engine is as easy as clicking on the search bar within the toolbar. It's more complicated if you use Safari and its built-in Google search bar, but you don't have to use Safari to browse the Web.

I decided to go with Bing (which requires Firefox users who want it in their toolbar to download an add-on, but that's easily done), and didn't really notice a difference in the experience. But the experience did drive home something that Yahoo's Prabhakar Ragahavan pointed out two weeks ago during a Yahoo search event.

Bing and Yahoo are spending a lot of time trying to differentiate themselves from Google by working images, graphics, and videos into the search results pages. Niche searches don't surface that kind of structured content, which means that a majority of searches still produce the "ten blue links" that Microsoft and Yahoo consider dirty words. If they really want to change surfing habits, that has to improve.

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