It’s not just you: Google search is getting worse. It’s more than just an annoying fresh AI box at the top of the results page that takes a long time to load and tends to spout nonsense. The overall quality of search results also appears to have deteriorated over time, even though promoted results and ads take up most of the user interface.
But despite the search giant’s ubiquity, you’re not stuck with Google. There are many alternative search engines. Neither is perfect, but each has advantages that make them worth considering. Here are five alternatives that will please most people. And remember: you don’t have to rely completely on one of them. In fact, it’s probably best to try a few different options and even continue to operate different search engines for different purposes in the future.
DuckDuckGo
Source: Justin Pot
DuckDuckGo is the longest-running, privacy-focused alternative to Google and remains one of the best in terms of features. The service is free and relies on advertising revenue, but the ads are based solely on what you’re searching for at any given time – which means there’s no long-term tracking that follows you between search sessions.
Me, a huge nerd, loves that you can browse search results entirely using your keyboard – just type something in the search bar, operate the up and down arrow keys to move to any selection on the results page, and press “Enter” to Open it. Then there they are bangs, which allow you to search other sites directly from the DuckDuckGo search bar – for example, typing “!w” at the beginning of your query will perform a Wikipedia search, bypassing DuckDuckGo entirely. There are over 13,000 such shortcuts, useful for directly searching everything from Reddit to WolframAlpha.
The service has retained a powerful reputation for privacy, at least as far as the search engine itself is concerned; there was some controversy regarding the DuckDuckGo browser, which blocks most tracking, but especially Microsoft, due to the contract between the two companies. Some users are also not thrilled with the “Chat” tab that integrates with OpenAI. However, it’s worth noting that AI recommendations do not appear in standard searches on DuckDuckGo.
Start doing
Source: Justin Pot
Start doing is a paid search engine that does not contain any advertising. The theory is that the subscription model allows you to offer high-quality search results without the temptation for developers to dilute them with ads. The engine gained recognition, among others, Cory Doctorow AND Jason Koebler of 404 Mediawhich isn’t too seedy.
One feature that people love is the ability to block matches from URLs you don’t like and that don’t show up in search results, which is useful if you notice that a particular site is consistently junk. There’s also a podcast search tool that I haven’t seen anywhere else. The main disadvantage is that you have to pay. Plans start at $5 per month, but that only gets you 300 searches. Unlimited search starts at $10 per month. You can try it out for yourself and decide if it’s worth paying for – there is a free version available, but it’s constrained to 100 searches.
It is worth noting that there has been a lot of controversy around the company related to the way it is conducted, which is about $2 million in investment he recently took out after bragging about bootstrap. Also, The CEO gets upset with any criticism he receives from the company. That aside, the search engine itself seems to work well, so give it a try if you want to prove yourself.
Bold
Source: Justin Pot
Courageous exploration is a search engine for the team behind it Brave browser, which is celebrated for its built-in ad blocking. It differs from DuckDuckGo by having its own search index, built from scratch (DuckDuckGo combines its own index with data from Bing and many other companies).
Brave also offers Goggles a feature that allows you to operate custom filters that enhance or decrease the rating of outlets based on factors such as topic and political beliefs. I found some of this to be overly simplistic – most sites are not uniform – but you can check the code to see what is included in any Goggle, so everything is at least very clear. There is also a built-in AI engine that can be turned on – simply press the up button after entering a search term to enable this feature for a specific search. In my opinion, the main drawback is the lack of any map function.
However, Brave’s reputation is decent the CEO has a controversial history and the company was already there accused of selling copyrighted data to train artificial intelligenceso take all this into account.
Ecology
Source: Justin Pot
Ecosia is a free, ad-supported search engine that donates all its profits to climate action. They talk about it very clearly –you can read the financial statements yourself. The search itself is powered by Bing and works quite well.
Embarrassment.ai
Source: Justin Pot
Embarrassment it’s a completely different beast. Instead of placing AI-generated text at the top of the results, it actually only offers AI-generated text, with links serving as citations for all the points raised. You can ask a question and then provide an answer, which may aid refine your results, and clicking on the quote will bring up some fascinating links. I find that Perplexity seems to be better at detecting and understanding satire and jokes than Google’s AI bot, though of course you should test it yourself and see what comes back.
Of course, anyone concerned about AI should not operate Perplexity, and there will no doubt be privacy concerns about this browser in the long run – it has raised $165 million in venture capital, which won’t happen unless investors expect a huge return and we all know where these things usually lead. For now, though, it’s an fascinating ad-free tool that may come in handy for some queries.
You can also operate Google differently
If you don’t want to give up Google search results but hate what the service has become, there are a few options. home page is a privacy-focused service that uses the Google search index to deliver results without tracking. It is also UDM14.com, a straightforward site that redirects to Google web view. Both URLs are worth keeping in your bookmarks for when you still feel like using Google.
