With Google getting involved with more and more internet fields, I am looking for a really good alternative to Google search in order to get away from them... ;-) Some time ago I made some sketchy comparisons between several more or less randomly chosen search engines and Google, but was not satisfied with the search results.
So, what is currently a Google alternative that you can really recommend?
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Member since:
2005-08-12
Member since:2005-08-12
Member since:
2007-03-26
Member since:2006-05-02
Member since:2007-03-26
It's been a many years since I've used most of these but:
* I used to swear by altavista before Google.
It's a very powerful search engine (or used to be 12 years ago)
* Never really rated Lycos other than a back up engine (back then you couldn't guarantee search engines had indexed the pages you wanted)
* When it was released, Ask was supposed to have a new and interesting approach to searching - I'm not sure how powerful or reliable it is in practice though as I've gotten lazy with relying on Google.
So in short - I can only really vouch for altavista - and even that recommendation is based on very dated experience.
Do keep us updated with your thoughts / experiences though - I'd love to find some alternatives too.
Member since:
1997-10-01
I'm afraid that Bing is the only one that's likely to give Google a run for its money, quality-wise. So if you'd like to stop supporting big bad Google by giving your eyeballs to Microsoft, well good luck with that!
I'm not sure why people are getting so agitated about Google's expansion into new services. If you don't want to use them, then don't. They're not forcing you to use the Google DNS service (and by the way, there's OpenDNS for that anyway). You don't have to use Gmail, Chrome, ChromeOS, Google Apps. You do have to use YouTube, unless you just want to miss out on a lot of stuff, but Google doesn't force you to use their browser to watch YouTube videos or do searches, so I'm not sure what the problem is. Are you afraid that once they do get a bigger footprint then they'll pull a Microsoft and try to leverage their monopoly?
Member since:2007-03-26
I couldn't disagree with that statement more.
In terms of indexing sites, theres plenty of search engines that are comparable to Google.
Data in the internet is effectively free to collate and organise. Therefore you don't have to be a large organisation to write an advanced search engine (remember, Google was only a research project when Yahoo was already worth $millions)
Furthermore, MSs search engines of old have frequently proved inadequate compared to many smaller brands - hence why I've never even bothered with Bing now.
Member since:
2005-09-03
You could have a look at Exalead http://light.labs.exalead.com/ , more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exalead
Member since:
2006-01-02
I have been playing with Duck Duck Go http://duckduckgo.com/ lately! 
Member since:
2005-07-11
Member since:
2005-07-08
Infopeople's Best Search Tools Chart is a good starting point: http://infopeople.org/search/chart.html
The biggest web search providers seem to only have strengthened their leading positions during the past years: http://searchenginewatch.com/3634991 so there may be few alternatives in the same category of general web search engines with huge databases. But the bigger is not always better. Often you might be able to find better information by using some specialized search engine http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Searching/Search_Engines/Spe... or a regional search engine: http://www.searchenginesindex.com/
There are also interesting true alternatives that do the whole concept of searching the web in a different way, like:
http://www.hakia.com/ (semantic search)
http://www.wolframalpha.com/ ("computational knowledge engine")
You might also like to try Scroogle that offers a more secure way of using Google (not sure what Google thinks about Scroogle though): https://ssl.scroogle.org/
Member since:
2006-05-02
Member since:
2009-04-05
You need to look for search engine that doesn't record your IP address. I use "Scroogle" (https://ssl.scroogle.org).
And also "ixquick.com". If you click on "my settings", you can turn on SSL and anonymous picture search.
Both of these have Firefox addon for them.
But Scroogle only prevent Google from recording your IP, your search can still be monitored if someone have access to your connection or if you are using internet of the corporation you're working in (most definitely). Or if you simply go to any website at all, the website can record your IP. Then in that case, you could use Tor or some VPN.
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