Goodbye Google Search!

Remember last year when I quit Google Mail and also quit Google Docs? Well, my efforts to DeGoogle didn’t end there…

I quit Google Search.

Yeah, Google Search… which I’ve been using for a quarter of a century. I even had a Google t-shirt back in… 1999 I think? No more.

I switched to DuckDuckGo, which is a bit more focused on privacy and doesn’t use my search history for advertising purposes. I don’t even have an account to log into. You can still change some settings, which should persist across browser sessions thanks to cookies in your browser. (Though you then have to set them in each browser on each device you use. I think that’s a small price to pay.)

DuckDuckGo does have some AI features, but allows you to turn them off. Searching the web, not seeing any AI garbage, it feels like… like Google used to be, or like the web used to be. It’s pretty nice. Occasionally if I cannot find what I need I will open a private window and do a Google search, but it’s rare I need to do that.

While I’ve been happy with DuckDuckGo, I also try not to be complacent. I’ve installed SearXNG onto my home server which can also search the web.

SearXNG is a free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from up to 251 search services. Users are neither tracked nor profiled. Additionally, SearXNG can be used over Tor for online anonymity.

So SearXNG goes out and does the searches using all sorts of search engines but protects your privacy by being a middle-agent. (There some public instances you can try, though they may be hit or miss, and localized results may be off.)

I’ve also had someone suggest I try Mojeek which claims to be “The alternative search engine that puts the people who use it first.” and unlike SearXNG does not rely on existing search engines but instead uses the Mojeek index of the web, so it is independent. (And, not into AI.)

I’ve left out a few options you could use instead of Google, but for those of use remember Ask Jeeves, Lycos, Alta Vista, Yahoo, and all the other search engines of 30 years ago, I think it’s our duty to find alternatives and try them out and see if we can move away from big tech, either by choosing self-hosted alternatives, more ethical companies, or way to subvert the existing system.