I ask because I’ve been doing a lot of research the last few weeks and Google search has really let me down. I’ve been finding better results on DuckDuckGo and Bing. Is this a recent thing with Google or am I out of the loop? Any other search recommendations?
Edit: In no particular order, some recommended alternatives to Google
SearXNG
Whoogle
Ecosia
Brave
Dogpile
DuckDuckGo
Kagi
Swiss Cows
Qwant
Bing
Google is mostly ads and robots now, I use it mostly for typing website names, not for actually searching things.
For searching things I’m testing kagi (http://www.kagi.com) which is not free, but not being ad-driven is an interesting concept for me.
This looks like a very interesting option but the pricing seems bananas. Early adoption and spreading the word would be driven by power users who are easily above 1,000 searches per month…and 25$ per month is a lot just for search.
According to a blog from March, it was costing them 1.25 cents per search. It seems like they brought that cost down around May since they were able to raise the search limits from what they were in March. It doesn’t sound like they’re making a ton of money though even at these prices.
But I agree, $25 is a ton for a search engine. On the other hand, if you’re using it enough to need that plan you’re probably using it for your work. The average person (which, the average person doesn’t care enough to sign up for this) only searches enough times a month to need the standard plan for $5.