Alternative search engines to Google?

[The Cosmic Avenger]

After copyright1997reloaded mentioned abandoning Google search in the Google Chrome to disable adblockers thread, I realized how dependent I am on Google search. It's worked pretty well for me, as I've learned to tune the keywords used to maximize the relevance. However, I haven't use any others since Ask Jeeves was new!

So what other search engines do you like, and why? I'm particularly looking for options for more technical power users, as I do use Google's site search, image search, and news search fairly often, but all opinions are welcome.

 

[Sunset]

regardless of which browser you use, you can still set it to use whichever search engine you like, ex Google.

Personally I use bing mostly.

 

[braumeister]

Duckduckgo is my next favorite.
Bing is OK.
Yahoo is still fairly popular, but that's like using Bing, which powers it.
Startpage (powered by Google though)
Twitter searching can sometimes be quite useful

 

[mpeirce]

I’ve completely switched over to DuckDuckGo and find it works fine for me. They’ve improved it a lot in the last couple of years. I can’t remember the last time I had to use google for search.

 

[Bamaman]

Bing is easier to type. There are too many Google divisions that pop up when typing.

 

[aja8888]

Does anyone know (for sure) when Google will stop the use of ad blockers in Chrome?

 

[timo2]

I use DuckDuckGo from their page "Our app and browser extension stop you from being tracked, so you can Internet with peace of mind."

https://duckduckgo.com/about

 

[easysurfer]

Another DuckDuckGo user here.

 

[Chuckanut]

DDG. A big +1.

 

[The Cosmic Avenger]

Does anyone know (for sure) when Google will stop the use of ad blockers in Chrome?

That's probably a better question for the Google Chrome to disable adblockers thread.

 

[bushpilot]

Bing is easier to type. There are too many Google divisions that pop up when typing.

duck.com links to duckduckgo.

Ironically, google owned duck.com for many years. They recently released it to duckduckgo.

 

[Just_Steve]

Dogpile.com is a metasearch engine and quires a few different search engines and combines the results.

 

[TheRunningMan]

I prefer Startpage. It provides google search results without exposing you to google...Startpage servers are in the middle providing privacy. Duckduckgo is very good as well but I have found that the search results may not be as useful.

 

[Spock]

When doing patent research, Megacorp IP lawyers directed us to use duckduckgo and to never touch google. Seems google has some internal idea harvesting AI that is fed by your research. Google swoops in and files a patent if there isn't one already... I'm sure its not completely automated... but when trying to protect a potential idea google search is not your friend.

 

[steelyman]

I’d never heard of duckduckgo before but it looks good and is easy to enable as the default search engine on the devices I use (browsers are Safari and Chrome).

Thanks for the tip!

 

[Oz investor]

duckduckgo as much as i can

Bing as a second pick .

some of my order favs might now be ancient history ( but if Bing is struggling i will give anything new a try , for a while )

i avoid Google ( and Chrome) wherever possible

and since Apple turned to Intel processors , i no longer use Apple or Safari

 

[The Cosmic Avenger]

I'm really liking DuckDuckGo, but I'll probably give a couple of the others that I don't know a tryout eventually.

 

[gretah]

Another DuckDuckGo fan here.
I love using filter tools of
+ - +"" -""

 

[walkinwood]

+ 1 for duckduckgo

 

[FreeBear]

Using start page as front end to google, but page loads up a little slowly on 2010 laptop. Anyone else use it?? Pros/cons?? Also use DuckDuckGo as a secondary.

 

[Music Lover]

Duckduckgo for me too. It's not about the ads...Google's bias and poor ethics are well documented.

 

[easysurfer]

I use Duckduckgo for my searches but still rely on Google maps for their Street View feature as that does come in handy getting idea of a location prior to actually arriving the very first time.

Begs the question, is there an alternative to Google maps or is Google maps the only game in town when showing actual pictures of buildings and streets?

 

[mpeirce]

Apple announced something along these lines earlier this week

https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/03/apple-maps-rebuild/amp/

 

[FreeBear]

Surprised at the duck's popularity. Inspired me to set it up on Firefox and my ancient experimental Linux box.

 

[JoeWras]

This morning pushed me over the edge and broke me. I just really got fed up with Google search!

I'm trying duckduckgo as an extension on the firefox browser and I'm impressed. I tried it years ago and it was, frankly, crap. It has come a long way. I think I'm going to convert and need to look into options on my android phone.

I'm not cancelling Google, but I need to do less with these people. What broke me this morning was I did a search on "USA Women's Hockey" and it directed me to 3 or 4 sites that all hung, and were clearly favored for their ad affiliation (ESPN, etc.) I don't know why they were hung, disney/espn must have had a server glitch at the time. The problem made me keenly aware of the search order.

On duckduckgo it directed me to the website of USA Women's Hockey, which is really what I wanted. Suddenly, my eyes were opened to how Google orders things. Duckduckgo actually reminds me a lot of Google circa 2008 or so.

Duckduckgo is transparent about how they make money and operate too. For example, location searches use an API from Apple Maps and they are upfront about this. This is one area that I'll probably stick with Google for a while.