Google Alternatives: Search Engines You Should Try

You switch search engines for two different reasons, which should be kept separate: to be profiled less, or to get different results. One tool doesn’t always work for both.

Who has their own index #

Building a web index means visiting billions of pages, storing them, and knowing how to rank them. It is incredibly expensive, which is why the market is controlled by just a few players.

A milestone to note: Ecosia and Qwant have formed a joint venture, European Search Perspective, to build a European index. It launched in 2025 starting from France and then Germany, with the idea of expanding it to other countries and offering it to other companies. It is the first credible attempt on this side of the Atlantic to avoid depending on American indices.

What does “respects privacy” actually mean? #

A search engine that doesn’t profile you does three things: it doesn’t link searches to a fixed identity, it doesn’t build an advertising profile, and it doesn’t pass your browsing history to others. However, it isn’t magic: your ISP still sees your traffic, the sites you visit see you arriving, and ads are still present on the results page—they are just chosen based on what you just searched for rather than who you are.

DuckDuckGo is the obvious choice if you want to stop being profiled without changing your habits: good results for most searches, no registration, no saved history, and the ability to send a single search to another engine via a shortcut. It also has its own browser for mobile and desktop, and generated answers (Search Assist) can be turned off.

Startpage serves a different purpose: you want Google’s results, but without Google knowing it’s you. Since 2019, it has been part of an advertising group (System1), which caused some controversy, even though they claim not to store personal data.

Brave Search is for those who want results that don’t pass through the two giants, accepting that their index might be less deep for very specific searches. It works in any browser, not just Brave.

Mojeek is the extreme case: a small index and sometimes surprising results, but it is completely independent and based in the UK. It is useful specifically when you are looking for something that other engines bury under a mountain of commercial pages.

Kagi is a paid service, and because of that, it has no ads: it allows you to block or promote sites you want in your results. It offers a trial with a limited number of searches, after which you pay a monthly subscription. It makes sense if you search heavily for work and are tired of pages full of ads.

Ecosia, and the engine that plants trees #

Ecosia’s model is transparent: advertising revenue funds reforestation projects, and their monthly financial statements are available online. It is the easiest proposition to understand for those who aren’t interested in tech but want their clicks to serve a purpose.

Since joining the European index project, it also has a technical reason to be chosen: an increasing portion of results no longer comes from American indices.

Presearch and the engines that pay #

Presearch offers a different model: searches are distributed across nodes managed by volunteers, with token compensation for those who search. The idea is curious, but look at it objectively before making it your everyday engine.

Three observations:

• The quality of results does not depend on an own index comparable to the giants, so you will notice a difference in difficult searches.
• The compensation is symbolic and variable, as it is tied to the fluctuating value of a token and daily limits: it is not a source of income and should not be treated as such.
• The incentive distorts usage: a system that pays you to search also attracts those who search just to get paid, which is a structural problem for service quality.

It remains a legitimate experiment in decentralization. For finding things, DuckDuckGo or Brave do it better.

Bing and the engines of major markets #

Bing is the second-largest search engine in the world and, through its index, also powers DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, and many others. It quickly integrated OpenAI’s artificial intelligence, and today Copilot is part of the search experience. Compared to Google, there isn’t much difference regarding privacy: Microsoft also relies on targeted advertising.

Yahoo Search still exists and shows Bing results within the Yahoo interface. Ask.com, formerly Ask Jeeves for natural language questions, is now marginal.

Then there are the engines that dominate countries where Google is weak: Baidu in China, Yandex in Russia, and Naver in South Korea. They are useful if you work with those markets or search for content in those languages. For users in Italy, Yandex in particular raises serious concerns regarding privacy and ties to the Russian government.

Automatic answers are changing the rules #

The biggest change of the last two years isn’t a new search engine, but the fact that everyone is showing a generated response at the top of the page: Google’s AI Overviews, which arrived in Italy in 2025, and then AI Mode, Copilot on Bing, and Search Assist on DuckDuckGo. For those searching, two things are changing:

• People click less. The synthetic answer is enough, or at least it seems to be.
• Sources are checked less often. Summaries are convenient, but checking remains necessary: for data that changes (prices, versions, regulations, hours), always open the original source.

Assistants like ChatGPT or Perplexity haven’t replaced search engines: they are useful for understanding a topic but terrible for finding an office website or a phone number. Use them for what they do well, instead of wondering which one will win. If the generated answer bothers you, use the Web tab on Google (sometimes under More) to show only links.

How to change your default engine #

It takes less than a minute and you can always find it in your browser settings under Search engine. In any browser, you can also add an engine that isn’t on the list. In the European Union, as a result of the Digital Markets Act, Android and Chrome have been offering a search engine choice screen since 2024, and iPhone offers one for browsers.

FAQ #

Are the results worse than Google’s? #

For most everyday searches, you won’t notice a difference. The difference is felt in very specific local searches (shops, hours, maps), on people’s names, and on niche topics where index depth matters. This is why it’s useful to have a quick way to repeat your search elsewhere.

Is changing engines enough to avoid being tracked? #

No: it’s one piece of the puzzle, not the whole solution. You still have cookies from the sites you visit, page measurement scripts, the account you are logged into, and the traffic seen by your ISP. A non-profiling engine, a browser that blocks trackers, and a bit of attention to your accounts are three different things that add up.

Which search engine is the most private overall? #

The most reliable ones are those with their own index and without profile-based advertising, because they don’t need your data to survive—such as Mojeek or Kagi (which is a paid service). The trade-off is a smaller index: choose based on how often you search for hard-to-find things.

Why does Google remain so dominant? #

Because of its index, built over twenty-five years, and because being the default engine in browsers and phones is worth a massive amount: almost no one changes the initial setting. Google pays Apple billions every year specifically for this. For the same reason, a US court ruled in 2024 that Google has an illegal monopoly on search, and the European Union has mandated choice screens.

Does it make sense to use more than one? #

Yes, and it is the most useful habit of all: use one as your default and others for searches where the first isn’t enough. Comparing the top ten results from two different engines on the same topic is also the fastest way to understand how curated they are.

Which search engine uses artificial intelligence? #

Almost all of them now: Google with Gemini (AI Overviews and AI Mode), Bing with Copilot, DuckDuckGo with Search Assist, and Brave with its summarized answers. Perplexity is built specifically around generated answers with sources. Almost all of them allow you to reduce or turn off these responses if you prefer only links.