You also should just stop using Google Search. DuckDuckGo is solid, or if you don't want to use search results from Bing's index, I've been very happy with Brave Search.
For me personally the issue is that some of my money would go to Yandex, and, by extension, to Russian government. I understand it is only a symbolic amount per user, but still, for me, this is unacceptable (I was a happy Kagi subscriber before I found out about this).
America is nearly as bad as Russia. Dollars paid to American companies are taxed and used to bomb children in Gaza. Are you boycotting all American companies?
From my point of view United States, all things considered, is not nearly as bad as Russia. I do not boycott all American companies but I do boycott some.
people say that but they often come back to Google ;)
I've just learnt to use ad blockers. the only time I disable it is when I look up the definition of something or the location of a place and the entire page goes blank because of some rules I've added to uBlock.
I haven't used Google (apart from their as-of-yet undefeated image search, the occasional hard link from a web page, and the two times I tried the Circle to Search feature) for at least five years now and I have zero interest in going back.
> people say that but they often come back to Google ;)
The thing is that Google is actively becoming more hostile and difficult to use. Not just Google Search, but really all their products.
They're becoming Facebook, slowly but surely. Something we might be forced to use now and again, but nobody actually likes.
The reality is that Google is such a poorly run company that they will destroy their own products, given enough time. Their competitors need to do nothing. Literally nothing.
DuckDuckGo falls hard in quality when it comes to queries which are not in English. The only search engines who are good for those are Google and Kagi, in my opinion.
It's solid, I use it 95% of the time, that 5% Google usually still disappoints.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=midjourney&ia=web -> Hmm, midjourney the AI thingy is not even there for me! Just https://www.midjourney.com which is not really clear on what it is. Midjourney is at Midjourney.online, which is not even on the first page. So Argualbly Google is still better. What a world.
Btw, I search DDG from the Firefox bar, and that does not let me copy the URL anymore!!! Wtf. There is just the search term, like there is in the field below it!! Omg, now I have the same thing twice, and a useful thing has been lost.
> I search DDG from the Firefox bar, and that does not let me copy the URL anymore
Yeah, I just noticed too. Go to Settings->Search there's a checkbox just below the default search engine. Uncheck that. Should be something along the lines of "Show search terms in the address bar in search results" (sorry for any errors in the translation, my browser's language is not English).
I agree somewhat, but those searches are getting less and less good on Google though.
In my recent experience, I'm far better off asking ChatGPT or just using it through Bing/Copilot than what I used to do a decade ago, which was deep dives through 5 pages of long-tail search results.
