i disagree. Google’s results went to shit for me years ago. the first page was literally just ads, sponsored links that had nothing to do with my search or looked like what i was looking for but were phishing/malware sites, regular results that were less about what i searched and more about what google found more appropriate for me.

i started to use duckduckgo despite its incredibly stupid name and it’s just like old times for me. except now it has AI assist which you can turn off or set how often you want to see it.

two things that helped sell me DDG was bangs and DDG browser. i got used to using DDG browser as default on mobile except for things i wanted to have persistent sessions on, which are very rare it turns out. bangs also help you directly search specific sites or even google in the unlikely event i would want to try to search that monstrosity instead. if you search for something and you don’t find what you want and want to try Google instead, just add !g to the search and it directs you to Google search instead. !gi for Google images.

there are tons of other bangs, like !w for Wikipedia and !imdb for… you’ll never guess but i use it sometimes.