Duckduckgo, searxng, and if you are willing to pay, kagi is far better than google was.
“is” absolutely, “was” there was a time in the mid-teens when Google’s search was god-like in its powers of finding what I wanted.
Duckduckgo is ok but not great even, although search in general is harder nowadays I think
Yeah i was mostly referring to pre ai enshitification google. Back when all they did was search the web for you and show you a single text ad, those were the days.
Im also inclined to agree that search in general has gone downhill, but that is more the fault of tech corps locking away info while seo ruins the leftover results.
I’m worried when ml models really take off the current web dies completely between corpos milking it to death, seo producing nothing but hollow, vapid nonsense to keep you engaged with their non information; and then as final nail in the coffin the ml model ability to entirely fabricate virtually anything digital, truth and information will be completely gone.