I've been using Ecosia for a while and liking it. I think the results are usually better than Google and the image search is way more useful, still gives you direct links to the image files. Though most importantly I like planting trees.
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
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Technology
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I exclusively use AltaVista.
I'll give a search on Duck Duck Go, and if I can't find what I need then I'll use Google.
But at this point I'm using Google Bard and ChatGPT more and more, at least at work.
Google. As much as I'd like to use other search engines, their search results are all severely lacking and not adequate for my needs (often pertaining to research) and they're generally not as great on the multilingual front or in searching pdfs.
I also have some keywords set up in my browser so I can directly search sites I use (e.g. Wikipedia).
Naw, I still use Google. With an ad blocker, I find it to provide the best results by far (though the ad blocker is important, because they get misleading ads sometimes). It's superior when searching for descriptions (e.g., you can't remember a movie title and have to describe it) and local results. Plus I use Maps heavily (it's superior to its competitors) and that integrates into Google.
I just frankly don't care that much about tracking my searches or the likes. I see it as the cost of getting a quality product for free. The only reason I even have the ad blocker is frankly because their ads are terrible. They don't do enough to curate their ads, so scams sometimes slip in. I also think it's very scummy that you can search, e.g., "pizza hut" and get an ad for Dominos above the Pizza Hut result.
I use DuckDuckGo, but mostly as a "terminal to the internet". In a few keystrokes i've opened a new tab, navigated to the homepage (https://start.duckduckgo.com/), then used a Bang to do a direct search inside the particular site or thing i need. For many things specially tech questions i do fall back to Google though
DuckDuckGo. Its results are much better than Google's in my experience. Whenever I Google something, all I get is a list of online stores I've never heard of, and they have nothing to do with my search input.
For me the main thing that makes me stick to DDG is the bangs - adding for example !wiki in the beginning of a search term to search directly in Wikipedia. It is a game changer, especially as I often need to search in specific sources for work. For example, !scholar for direct access to Google Scholar is great.
Whenever I think Google will provide better results it's as easy as !g - but I am also experiencing that the results are increasingly unhelpful (often geared towards shopping rather than information).
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Google and ChatGPT, I tried DDG several years ago, but the results were not good, might try it again
Ecosia. I like trees.
Yay Ecosia!!
I'd use Ecosia still if it weren't for the fact that the filter is missing the "last year" setting. I'm a software engineer - 9 times out of 10, I want to find the bugs for a very specific version of a software, so having the year filter helps.
I now use Brave Search.
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DuckDuckGo, and before that, I used ixquick(which is now StartPage).
Currently DuckDuckGo, but I will switch to SearXNG because of this.
Because of what? One idiot that broke his search engine somehow?
I tried DuckDuckGo for quite a while, but I consistently failed to find things that I knew existed, so would switch back to Google anyway.
example: I am publishing a serial over on Royal Road, and one of the things an author there with any amount of traction does is search for links and possibly re-hosts of their materials. Links are fine, but re-hosts are obviously a no-go and you want to report sites that do that and/or take other measures. Google would find sites tracking and linking when I searched, but DuckDuckGo did not find any of them.
Heck, DDG didn't even find most of the tech sites that my title happens to overlap phrases with. ("No Need For A Core?" manages to trip over conversations with server cores, which is hilarious for a high magic fantasy series). I just can't trust that it finds enough stuff.
Duck Duck Go is the only search engine I use. Switched away from Google for privacy reasons and haven't missed it a bit.
I mostly use Startpage and Waterfox as browser. I know system1 was bought by an advertising company which on itself is a bit spooky, but they haven't done anything that would be a concern for my data.
Startpage uses google as a serach engine but anonymizes your search query and u don't see these paid google ads in your searches. pretty neat.
Waterfox is modified Firefox but without the Mozilla shit. I wanted a good balance between usability and privacy and other Firefox based browsers like LibreWolf were just such a drag for everyday use. I can still sync my Mozilla account for bookmarks and stuff which is neat but for other than sync functions and updates Wterfox doesn't phone home
SearXNG, searches every search engine and regroups them in a single list, alongside the very powerful "bang" variant they use ("!!" is like "!" for ddg, and "!" is to only search with this search engine, ":en" is to choose a specific shortcode language.)