For many people Google is search — they’ve simply never considered an alternative. But there are plenty of search engines other than Google, offering benefits such as increased privacy, environmental perks and AI features.
Opting for one of the alternative search engines doesn’t necessarily mean accepting sub-standard search results, either. Some of them are even powered by the same search technology as Google itself, meaning there’s no loss in results quality.
Here, I’ll run through 10 Google alternatives, revealing the reason why you might want to consider a search engine other than the mighty Google itself. And you won’t have to pay to use any of them.
Why Is Google The Most Used Search Engine?
There’s no doubt that Google is the ten-ton gorilla of the search business.
Just fewer than nine out of ten (87.5%) people in the U.S. turn to Google for search, according to Statcounter. The next biggest player is Microsoft’s Bing (see below), on a lowly 7.4%.
It’s not only in the U.S. where Google dominates. In fact, the European and worldwide figures give Google an even higher market share, at 91.1% and 90.9% respectively. Only when you move into territories such as China and Russia do you see Google’s stranglehold on the search market weaken.
Google wasn’t the first search engine. Rivals such as Yahoo beat it to the punch in the early 1990s. However, Google rapidly established itself as the dominant search engine in the late 1990s, purely on the strength of its results, which were less vulnerable to gaming than some of its rivals, meaning people generally found what they were looking for the first time.
Google was so confident of the accuracy of its results, that it included an “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on its search page that took you straight to the top result. The button is still in place today.
Today, Google’s dominance of the search market is reinforced by other factors. Google is the default search engine for Google Chrome, by far the world’s most used web browser. It’s the default search engine for Android, the world’s most popular smartphone operating system. Even on software that Google doesn’t control, such as Apple’s Safari, it’s still the default choice.
It’s not the only choice, however.
The 10 Best Alternatives To Google
There are several reasons to consider search engines besides Google.
Google is an advertising business, and it relies on collecting user data to feed that business. If you’re not keen on everything you type into a search engine being potentially used to create a highly detailed profile of your likes and habits, there are less invasive alternatives.
Google’s sheer dominance of the search market means alternatives often struggle to get any of the limelight, but there are at least ten strong alternatives to Google, and all of them are free.
1. Bing
Bing is Google’s closest rival, even if it’s as close as a foot race between a cheetah and a kitten. Microsoft’s search engine has been around for 15 years now, but it’s only recently come into its own with the Copilot AI features, enhancing search results with the same AI engine that’s used to power ChatGPT.
So, for example, you can ask Bing to “give me a summary of the 1999 baseball World Series” and get an AI-generated response detailing the winner, most valuable player and other trivia without having to dig through search results. It’s a strong choice for those who want to cut to the chase.
2. DuckDuckGo
The brilliantly named DuckDuckGo is a solid alternative for people who want to protect their privacy.
Unlike Google, DuckDuckGo promises not to track you, either by monitoring what you’re entering into the search engine or on other websites. You won’t be asked to sign in, your IP address (a unique identifier that can be used to build personal profiles) is not stored and nothing is sold to advertisers.
DuckDuckGo uses a variety of sources to populate its search results, but none of them are Google.
3. Yahoo
Yahoo pre-dates Google, and the grand old veteran of search still has its strengths.
Yahoo is much more of a content portal than the sparse Google homepage, offering news headlines, trending searches, weather and more from a packed home screen. If you want to get the flavor of the day’s big talking points before exploring the web further, it’s a decent starting point.
Yahoo’s search results are now powered by Bing, having long retired its own flaky search technology.
4. Ecosia
If you want to help the planet while you search, Ecosia provides a novel means of doing so.
The company claims that all the profit it makes are plowed into climate action, which means that over the course of its 15-year lifetime it has planted more than 200 million trees and spent almost $100 million on climate action.
Ecosia’s search results are powered by a combination of Google and Bing, so you shouldn’t be sacrificing results quality by doing a little environmental good.
5. Qwant
Qwant is another search engine playing the privacy card, claiming that it does not store your search history nor sell your personal data.
There are caveats to this, however. “The use of our advanced and optional features requires the sharing of certain data with our partners,” the company explains on its About page, which means a deeper read of the privacy policy may be in order before you start.
The French service relies heavily on Bing for its search results.
6. Startpage
You might think of Startpage as Google without most of the bad bits.
Although the search results are powered by Google, Startpage insists your personal data and search history are never recorded, IP addresses are removed from its servers and trackers are blocked. You do still get sponsored results at the top of results to help pay the bills, but it’s less intrusive than Google’s approach.
It has most of the features you’re used to from regular Google, including image, video, news and shopping search options, though “maps” simply redirects you to either Google or Bing.
7. Swisscows
Swisscows is yet another search engine claiming to offer strong privacy protection, but it goes one further by only delivering “family-friendly” results, too.
As ever, such promises have to be taken with a degree of caution, not least because the definition of “family-friendly” differs from user to user. But in tests, it refused to return results for searches relating to pornography. That said, results for adult video games and violent movies were returned, so some parents may not necessarily regard it as a safe haven.
8. Searx
Searx is something of a geeky choice: a meta search engine that gathers results from other engines and presents them on the same page.
It claims to do this while protecting your privacy, not allowing the used search engines to profile your search history or track your search history. It also claims to be “hackable” in a good way, meaning anyone can take its code and run a search engine themselves.
On the downside, it proved buggy in tests, with image and file search results often throwing up error messages. File this one under “experimental.”
9. Brave
Brave is perhaps best known for its privacy-protecting browser, but it’s in the search business now too.
It’s not relying purely on anonymous search and transparent rankings to pull in users, though. Brave has integrated AI answers neatly into its main search box, meaning that if you pose a question in search, you’ll likely get an AI-generated answer at the top of your search results. As ever, be wary of the AI hallucinations.
10. Mojeek
Mojeek is another privacy-focused search engine with a very concise privacy policy: “we don’t track our users.” It hasn’t done so for the nearly 20 years it’s been running.
In truth, results can be erratic, as it’s relying on its own search technology, not borrowing from elsewhere. Image results are particularly weak.
However, it’s leaning into AI, with summaries of search results pages. And the option to restrict searches to Substack pages might appeal to users of that service.
Bottom Line
There’s no doubt Google’s enduring popularity is largely down to the high quality of results it delivers. But that does come at the cost of privacy.
There are several strong alternatives to Google, some even using Google’s search results, but with better privacy protections. If you’ve never looked beyond Google, it’s worth seeing what the rivals have to offer. You may be surprised.
