Technology

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

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.

Bing and DDG.

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.)

I use Ecosia. It works quite well, and if I ever need to search something on Google instead (like a coin flip/stock ticker) you can just do #g or #yt for Youtube They also plant trees and are carbon negative

Been self-hosting a Whoogle instance for a while now and love it.

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.

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).

Used to use SearXNG but got increasingly frustrated with it, so I mostly use DDG these days. Although, that being said, most search engines these days are filled with SEO clickbait trash which makes it basically mandatory to do site:reddit.com

Might have to try Kagi some day, despite my reservations about their pricing.

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.

Can we stop trying to coin cute terms like "enshittification"? What that term describes is just capitalism working as intended.

There is a term that describes this behavior that we've been using for at least decades (to describe behavior that has happened since the inception of capitalism): rent seeking.

I exclusively use AltaVista.

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?