I like DDG a lot more, especially because of the bang shortcuts. But I transitioned recently to Qwant. It also has bang shortcuts and is hosted in Europe.
this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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Have been using it for 8 years now. I never felt the need to switch back honestly. Only Google thing I really love is Maps and that's it.
Tried OpenStreetMap? Quality varies by country though
Gnome Maps is honestly really good!
Not everything has to be inside your browser.
Compared to a few years ago, itβs better. Some websites still arenβt indexed, and even by entering their name exactly, they donβt show. Google doesnβt have this problem.
Brave search is also pretty good
I use QWANT but I have the same feeling tbh. Or maybe Google search has been worsening I'm not too sure..
yeah honestly I've been using ddg for a very long time and while a few years ago I had to frequently !g because search sucked now google got so enshittified many times ddg feels better
I switched to it a couple of years ago, with the expectation that I had to resort to google in more complex search instances. But very soon I found out that ddg did the job, and my "alternative" google searches did not turn up anything better, quite the contrary in fact, and I haven't been back since.
Better usually in my experience. Google is mostly SEO-sludge anyway. Though sometimes when you need something very specific Google is better but that gap has been pretty much closed during 7+ years Iβve used DDG.
I use Startpage and it feels like I always get the results I want even when I don't use perfect prompts. Just recently I got a three month free trial for Kagi and the results were better than google in my opinion, or at least less cluttered with "possibly related things" that are just ads in the end.
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no. i switch to using it as my primary search engine every once in a while, just to see how it's doing. i always run into situations where i can't find the thing im looking for. maybe im just the obscure searches man
It's not as good as google was when I was first allowed to use the internet 15+ years ago, but much better than today's google. Just so much more peace of mind to know that profit isn't what governs my search results.
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I use Yandex for finding pirated or otherwise censored content.
Definitely not; DDG has always been bad. However, as others have pointed out, Google is getting worse and every day. That said, it's still better than DDG, which isn't saying much.
There are no good search engines anymore. I got tired of having to add site:reddit.com to all or my searches to get actual answers, so now I've resorted to using AI and pretending that it isn't just making up half the shit it spews. Perplexity is a half decent replacement for a search engine; it's more accurate than most and it cites its sources:
Have you tried Kagi? They have their problems, but I think it's better than Google.
It has been for several years now. I rarely use Google now, and when I do, I'm using it out of DuckDuckGo (!g)
As a general purpose search engine yeah it's just as good. Google has some nice extra features which aren't too important (for example if you search UFC it shows full fight card info and results on the search page).
Where it falls behind is for more "power user " type work. I only use Google at work as it makes finding very specific results with keywords and date ranges on certain sites etc much easier.
Nowadays I use Qwant though to boycott us. It's much slower but still does the job for day to day use.
It's my primary but Google unfortunately is often a fallback. And Google is tracking the shit out of us these days. Certain obscure searches don't work well on DDG, sad to say.
I feel like its better than google. I switched to DDG a couple years ago. 6 months ago I did a trial run with a self hosted search that only used google as a back end, the results felt like garbage
I've switched away from DDG after many years of use. I have gone to Ghostery Private search. It seems to be better for my search results with a lot less garbage mixed in.
Yes, mostly, except that programming related searches have really gone downhill in DDG for me.
For me they are even better than Google. But I use Qwant now.
Probably so. Haven't used it much but Google has got so much worse. Being filled with adds and irrelevant results that DuckDuckgo probably is better now.