Technology

Kagi on iOS and Mac. DDG w/Google on Android because my preferred Android browser, Vivaldi, doesn't offer Kagi. Anyone know how to default Vivaldi to Kagi?

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.

I exclusively use AltaVista.

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

I use DuckDuckGo. Including using their browser on iOS and windows.

Thanks for making me aware of Kagi, I've been trialing it and getting decent results is a breath of fresh air in a world of blogspam and LLM garbage.

They're all garbage. Content farms and SEO nonsense has been flooding search engines with useless garbage for years. Either that or pages that simply copy forum threads over and over and over so you get a whole results page of what appears to be different sites, but are all a copy of the same forum thread from 2007. Or they grab your search string and then you have a page that looks like it's exactly what you need, only to find out it's scammy bullshit. But AI is making that whole problem exponentially worse.

I've tried DDG many many times over the years. Sometimes it's ok. But overall, most of the results i get just aren't relevant, and it seems like over the last year or two DDG's results have gotten way worse. I always end up back on Google. As crappy as Google is, the results still end up being more relevant overall.

i use brave search (even if i'm on firefox), it gives good results while having an independent index

I've still been using Google but it has gone seriously down hill. After an experience earlier today I think I'm done with them for good. I was trying to check if digital international drivers permit were legit (they're not), and when I googled it, the word "digital" was completely ignored, which was the most important modifier in the query, making the results worthless. I think they're generalizing queries so they're more cachable and cheaper to fulfill, but it's made the experience terrible now, so I'm finally done with them.

I'll probably switch to duck duck go. The bing index didn't ignore the word digital for me.

I typically use StartPage, sometimes DDG. Occasionally I pop in and check out how Brave Search is progressing, out of curiosity.

I would love to use Searx, but I've never found an instance where functionality wasn't breaking all the time or it just randomly goes offline. As much as I want to be, I've learned that I'm not much of a self-hoster. So, yeah, every time I try Searx, I wind up back at StartPage. If anyone has any solid, reliable instances they know of, I'd love to check them out.

Qwant (but I hate all search engines nowadays)

A combination of DDG and Google. DDG's results too often look like a list of sponsors so when that happens I fuck right back off to Google.

Get an ad blocker, get Privacy Badger, use a VPN, experience the internet the way it was before corporate shitbags got hold of it. Mostly.

I use SearXNG and Ecosia.

Searxng, reddit, gmap or OSM for mapping.

Currently DuckDuckGo, but I will switch to SearXNG because of this.

DuckDuckGo here.

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

DuckDuckGo, and before that, I used ixquick(which is now StartPage).

Google and ChatGPT, I tried DDG several years ago, but the results were not good, might try it again

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).

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.)