It turns out today is the anniversary of the release of the first web browser, Mosaic, in 1993. Since I posted my web browser recommendation yesterday, today I’ll focus on something we all use in our browsers: search engines.
When we think of web search, we almost always think of Google, who revolutionized search engines in the late 90s with their algorithms and automated curation. Companies like Yahoo and Microsoft have tried to compete throughout the years, but few now remember that Yahoo started out as a search engine before Google, while the best which Microsoft can do is…Bing?
Now, however, Google and Microsoft are working to implement AI into their search results. The results aren’t looking good, at least according to SEO experts such as Lily Ray:
“It’s the worst quality results on Google I’ve seen in my 14-year career,” eminent SEO expert Lily Ray told Fortune.
Instead of filtering out scams, Google is seemingly bowing to the pressure and is instead promoting them.
Tangermann, V. (2024, January 20). AI Garbage Is Destroying Google Results. Yahoo. Retrieved January 23, 2024, from https://news.yahoo.com/ai-garbage-destroying-google-results-120005350.html
Between that and my desire to move away from Big Tech, I’ve recently switched to the DuckDuckGo search engine. Unfortunately, DuckDuckGo is another proprietary search engine like Google and Bing. When I did a check for open source search engines, there were few options I could find. Two of the search engines which came up on alternativeto.net, Searx and Gigablast were recently discontinued, while the rest were pretty obscure. In fact, outside of DuckDuckGo, most of the non Big Tech search engine options were completely unknown to me. DuckDuckGo it is, then.
So far, my search experience with DuckDuckGo has been good. I’ve found whatever I’ve looked for without issue, and I don’t use it for anything else. DuckDuckGo does one thing and it does it well. Throw in the focus on user privacy and this, in my opinion, is the best current search engine option. You, however, may have a different opinion. If you do, let me know in the comments.
