i use a searx instance. it sends requests to multiple search engines on your behalf. you can choose which ones. it's free software. you can check https://searx.space for a list. you can also spin up your own if you want :)
this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
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mostly use ddg. Used to be that it was harder to use full time and I'd have to go look at google for something specific but that happens less and less over time. Idk how much of that is ddg improving or google becoming dog shit but I try to use big tech companies' stuff as little as is feasible
ddg is mostly a front-end for bing results
google is, indeed, becoming unusable
gradually shifting away from google to yandex
yandex search by image is significantly better, and the normal search is less shit in general, even ignoring the extreme bias in google results
when my partner talks about stuff she likes online i put it in a folder for gift ideas and a lot of the stuff is on accts where they dont incl a link, anyway i have to reverse image search it a lot and yandex has become my go to bc googles is just advertising for amazon or something now apparently lol or at the very least just really bad at finding what i'm wanting
I use DDG, but I use the !g (google) bang a lot, either for site: search, or when my query gets complicated enough that DDG will get confused and Google will still actually look for something useful after ignoring half my terms. The bangs are useful in general though; even just !w makes it more useful than Google. (I mean I could set up quick searches in my browser, but nobody has done that since 2008.)
I've been thinking of trying out Kagi, a paid premium search engine. A bunch of people on hackernews say it's good, but what'd really sell me on it is a recommendation from someone who isn't on hackernews.
I use kagi and it’s quite good results wise, certainly less AI mill spam, but the pricing tiers are fucked up. $5 for 300 searches is not enough, i always end up going through them all, then they go to $10 for unlimited which is preposterous like I refuse to pay that for a streaming service let alone search, get the fuck outta here. $5 for 1k searches or $10 unlimited would make a lot more sense to me, or just charging per search.
Once you are capped on the base tier it’s annoying though bc if you have it set as your default engine it gives you buttons for google and bing to run your search so you end up having to click twice.
I don't mind paying for search in theory but Kagi seems way too expensive when DDG works pretty well for me. I've never had any major issues and like you say, the bangs are so good.
Edit. I bought a month of Kagi to see and okay.. I get it... It's pretty fucking good and extremely customisable. I'm going to give it a go for the month and see how I feel.
I still mostly use google, but i'll fall back to DuckDuckGo when I need to.
I like Ecosia Search because it plants trees.
I was using Ecosia for a bit but the results weren’t great and I ended up having to use google half the time anyway. I’d like a new one though because google is becoming fucking unusable