Alternative search engines

[viper37]

I have been getting annoyed with Google lately as it covers its search results with ai summaries (the overview and those similar question drop downs with ai summary).

It used to be great but feels like I need to scroll past more things to find answers.

That got me thinking as to whether there are any viable alternatives. Today I've started trying qwant which has some odd add results at top (searching pugs told me to shop for pugs on Amazon) but results after that were cleaner.

Any others that you have tried/regularly use?

Startpage - supposedly, all of Google results, but without AI.  In my experience, not as good for image search.  More accurate to say it uses Google as a backend, if you want to go technical.
Duckduckgo.  Privacy minded, but with AI now.  Not as good as Google, unfortunately.
Qwant.  Don't use it that often.  It uses Bing as a backend, as you may have discovered.
Mojeek.  Don't really use it.  I have it in my search bar.
Perplexity. AI search engine, really.  So if you don't like Google stuff now, you'll hate it...  But I use it, sometimes.  I find it has its uses.

[viper37]

I use duckduckgo on my phone and find it less annoying than google... but not so much better that I've switched on my computer.

Yeah that's been my same experience. It is alright on my phone but nothing I find great.

I use Bing, as I can donate to charity for using it.

The results alsi seem less scam-financed and fewer social media posts.

I'm worried with Bing that Microsoft is all in on AI so it will be pretty AI heavy.

I did just find and try Startpage. Here's summary of what I just saw when doing head to head search on the following: history of the mongols

Google - That wretched AI overview, followed by a couple links (wikipedia and britannica). Then it was those dreadful dropdowns of questions I had not asked and when you clicked arrow to show answers, all AI summaries. Then a few links before another set of dropdown questions followed by what people were saying on social media. Though it did also have some links to university pages on the topic on first page though buried after the aforementioned dross.

Bing - First thing was a dashboard created by co-pilot. It did feel a little less annoying than google's AI overview but still a rose by another name... Did then quickly get me to links of webpages and some videos I could watch on youtube. Annoyingly some sort of interface opened at the bottom asking me to refine my search with copilot. No hits from university webpages until page 3 of search results.

Startpage - gave me 3 ads, 2 to buy books on the mongols (one was Amazon but had picked a specific title) and then 1 for watching a show about the Mongols. Then just hits where I could learn about the history of the mongols. (it did have something on right suggesting their AI offer but with one click it disappeared). Also when I refreshed the page, the ads disappeared or when went back to search turned into just one row of books I could buy ahead of the links. Had university sites on the topic on first page.

Qwant - gave me 2 ads, one about shopping on Amazon, one on great deals on Ebay. Lots of ads on the far right. Refreshing added 2 more ads, one for appcrazy (?) and some site on teaching materials (teacherspayteachers.com). Did have university sites on first page.

Duckduckgo - gave me 3 ads, one shopping on Amazon (looks like possibly specific title), one on thriftbooks and one on Secret History of the Mongols on ebay. Next it had an AI generated summary before letting me have links I was looking for. Unlike google, you can click to tell it to never give AI generated summaries. Did have university sites on first page.

From this simple test looks like Startpage and Duckduckgo feel a little less clunky than google/bing and don't have the bizarre ads of qwant. Will need to look deeper at the quality of results it provides as less cluttered page isn't great if it doesn't give relevant results.

Use Firefox and use Ublock Origin to get rid of the ads.
Or use Ublock Origin lite on Chromium based browsers.
I believe Vivaldi has a built in ad blocker and its based on Chromium, so if it's your cup of tea, you could try that too.