I know what you mean. I still use it all the same as my default search, the reason is the bang (!) Operators.

So if the ddg normal search isn't working, I can add a !g and I get the Google version. Or if I want Google maps... Then I just add !gm

The other one I use a lot is wolfram alpha for unit conversions and calculations, just add a !wa

Hacker news search is !HN

Having this one stop shop for many different search types end up being way better than Google, even if somethimes the regular search may not be so great

I switched to SearXNG and never looked back since. It's a meta search engine that encompasses multiple other engines like google, bing, ddg, wikipedia, openstreetmaps and many more. You can always select which engines you want to use and the best is that this tool makes your search anonymous. you have to select a server at searx.space and then you right click the url to make it the default search engine on firefox.

Right now I am testing Kagi, which is a paid alternative - from a privacy point of view, it looks great, and the results are good. It also has a lot of additional features that suit me well. No Maps integration though. alternatively, I can recommend SearXNG, but it involves a bit of tinkering.

I’ve been impressed by how well brave search is on the brave browser

Doesn't ddg pull results from Bing? I don't think that would solve your problem.

I will recommend the obvious choices if you haven't considered them already.

• StartPage - pulls from Google
• Brave - Independent and yields really good results, however relies on Bing/Google for images

Search engines are about to become almost useless due to GenerativeAI flooding the internet. I don't know if there's any possible solution

DDG isn't perfect by a long shot, but it's still leagues better than google. I think SEO overall has taken a nosedive in recent years, especially with AI written content muddying the waters. Unfortunately I do not know of an alternative that's better than either.

As a trucking dispatcher I have relied more on Bing Maps because they are more updated than Google maps sometimes. Google maps is almost impossible to search for a specific thing when you're in a pinch, because there will be an ad for a competitor at the top of the list and you can easily be misled if you are in a rush. Happened to my bf a few weeks ago when he was searching for the closest UPS (near closing time) and inadvertently drove to a FedEx because it was the ad at the top of the search results. By the time he realized his mistake the UPS was closed. Fuck Google.

@bermuda @technology Another vote for Searx-NG. I found it pretty easy to set up via docker (although there are some public instances you can use to try it out to see if you like the results).

I’ve been using DDG as a Google replacement for a 3-4 years now. I have to say that my experience in terms of search results has been the opposite of yours. Google’s ads were so prominent and the search results so lacking what I wanted to see, it has become totally useless to me. DDG on the other hand almost always shows me what I’m looking for in the first few results.

Having said that, I’ve been using DDG long enough that perhaps I’m just acclimated to its features and functionality.

You could have a look at startpage. It is basically a google proxy.

I have no idea what you are talking about. I've used ddg for 5+ years and the search rsults have been so much better than the ad hell that google has been to the point that when i have to use a computer that uses google as default search engine i feel like i lost the ability to search stuff.

Strange, i personally use searx via xo.wtf

I have used Qwant myself at times.

https://www.mojeek.com/ is an alternative

SearX

I’ve certainly found it frustrating that these alternate search engines don’t always cater for geographic location, so if I’m looking for a product I get results that are US-centric versus retailers based near me. Google does do a good job of knowing what’s relevant to you based on your history and location. I’ve tried DuckDuckGo and Brave so far and both have routinely ended in my needing to jump to google on occasion.

Maybe that ends up being the solution, only use Google when you can’t find it elsewhere so at least they’re only getting 10% of your search history…

I use searxng via spot.murena.io and it isn't perfect, but works well enough. Though honestly, when I used DDG and wasn't getting the results I wanted, I just used !Bangs to check Google and other sites.

Since Bing chat was released, I mostly switched to Bing and even there I have to go to Google for about 20% of the searches after Bing not really giving me great search results (in the cases I need to search for things that I don't want to or can use Bing chat for). So I doubt any privacy-friendly search engine will do a better job.

I have used Qwant in the past, but the search results were just so much worse. That experiment did not last longer than a week.

I've recently learnt of a project called Whoogle. It's still on my things to check out list, so can't vouch for it myself, but I've heard good things about it.

I also hate duckduckgo results, they are truly awful. I've switch to Brave search, as I appreciate their independance from other search engine's indexers. If you want google results, use Startpage!