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Which search engine do you use regularly?

VitoBotta

VitoBotta

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 2, 2020
913
362
Espoo, Finland
I am trying to move away from Google due to the excessive ads and tracking, and also because it is known that some results are "too personalized", so biased. I have been playing with various alternatives; it seems that DuckDuckGo is the most popular privacy focused search engine but I tried it for a week and it was really poor in terms of results quality. StartPage is better because of the Google results but I've read not so good things about the company behind it. Ecosia not very good in terms of results either. At the moment I am testing Kagi, which is ad free but it will be paid with a monthly fee when out of beta. It's not bad actually. It seems to offer better results than DDG for example and supports the same bangs. Another one I am playing with is Whoogle, which I have installed on one of my servers so I use it with a custom domain. This one is pretty good too, it returns Google results but completely anonymized and without any ads. The only thing I like more of Kagi compared to Whoogle is that it has some features similar to Google such as featured snippets, instant answers and something called "Lenses" that help specify the type of search. So I've been playing with these and others and can't decide what to replace Google with.

What do you use, if not Google, and why? Thanks.
 
For me DDG was very disappointing. Every other search I had to try Google to find what I was missing. I am trying Brave Search now. Looks nice and can automatically take results from Google (anonymously) when the results from its own index are not good, but it's a little slowish.
 
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Yeah I just gave up trying the others and am back with Google unfortunately. At least with uBlock origin I see no ads and hopefully there's no tracking either.
 
VitoBotta said:
Brave has also its own search engine, have you tried it?
Click to expand...
Well colour me embarrassed! I never knew. I've just gone into " Preferences " and there it was in the drop down box. I've switched it on and will give it a go.?
 
Yes, DDG and Brave search work OK for basic, simple things but sadly Google results are far better for everything else. I wish that wasn't the case but it's extremely noticeable. At least half the time with other engines I just end up having to use Google anyway.
 
Google, but I also hate the ads and tracking.

So, I use addons/extensions with my browser and the primary one is uMatrix. Third party tracking and ad servers are shut down by default (you actually have to approve them) and uMatrix can be setup so that any site you visit sees you as having just appeared there, not as coming through a Google search.

uMatrix replaced three addons/extensions for me when I started using it.

I only see ads and tracking if I use my non-regular browser (Vivaldi).
 
Google mostly for me. Though I do vary what browser I use.
Safari - mostly what I use.
Firefox - for my housemate who primarily uses it to access YouTube to sing to karaoke backing tracks (don't want her contaminating my YouTube history or suggestions based on her search history of primarily 1980s S-A-W cheesy pop karaokes).
Chrome - for 'websites I might want to access that I don't want my housemate to know I look at' ;) (she is way too dumb to start any app not in the taskbar, so she will never open it).
 
Need to give a quick shout-out to Ecosia!

They plant a new tree for approximately every 45 searches you make. They're super ecologically conscious and operate in tons of countries focusing on local biodiversity instead of just mindlessly planting anything and calling it a day.

They also keep their financial reports extremely transparent so you can actually see how all the money they make is being spent.

It's definitely no Google in terms of search quality, but unless you're looking for something very specific, it really is good enough. It's a wonderful way to de-Google and bring some good into the world at the same time!
 
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Google.

I've tried DDG and Bing, they're fine for simple searches in English, but the moment I need to search for something more specific or in a language different from English then I need to use Google.
 
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