Whats the best search engine that looks similar to google

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Cock_Inspecting_Asexual@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

Im getting so sick and tired of Google rn. Reddit has become a better place to search for questions than Google has. I need a new search engine :(

No, I don’t want Kagi either, I dont wanna to pay a subscription for a search engine just to get what I want. I tried all the others, Ecosia, Duckduckgo, etc… But they usually fall flat cus they just don’t have some of the quirks that Google has that I like, specifically when it comes to image search.

I want a browser I can easily adjust to, which is why I want it to function/look like google. Yes, I did try searching for it, but I’m not getting anything reliable (how typical)

Also, if anyone can recommend me a browser better than Opera GX that’s JUST as customizable as GX is, that’d be great too.

*Please don’t bully me over using GX. Everyone keeps yapping about it being Chinese Spyware or something or other, but the level of customization I can do with it is a total godsend. I don’t know any other browsers that let me have interactive wallpapers or keyboard sounds, let alone the silly screen filters! I like having complete personalization over my stuff, its fun for me.

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Varyk@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
DDG is like what Google used to be.

I like the simplicity always find what I’m looking for, so I haven’t tried many other deep cuts.

I’m curious about their new assist tool too.

its answers are sourced by curated credible sources bouncing off of Wikipedia entries, so corroborative fact-finding, which I like.

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- Cock_Inspecting_Asexual@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Tbh… DDG in my opinion gives me way too much porn when it comes to image searching. And sure I could just turn on safe search, but I dont wanna do that and fear it may hide some images that aren’t porn that I’d maybe wanna see
  
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  - Varyk@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    that-how? duckduckgo gives you more porn than other search engines? what are you searching for?
    
    are you searching terms on the edge or something?
    
    I don’t have safe search on, use it. search function daily and I’ve never had an accidental porn return, or at least so rarely that I can’t remember it happening.
    
    this is a phenomenon worth looking into.
    
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- Cock_Inspecting_Asexual@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  ok, after using DDG for 3-4 weeks, its come to my attention that this search engine is kinda fucking annoying to use ;m;
  
  First thing, it doesn’t correct the misspellings for me like google does, I have to fix them myself. idrk if theres a fix for that
  
  second thing, it is now ALSO giving me heavily unrelated shit to what im trying to search. Im trynna look up things like “How to make Kava taste good” and its giving me articles on just what Kava is. or I’m looking up, “Why do all the good people die first and bad people live on” and its giving me articles on what personality traits live the longest. It’s some how WORSE than google, cus now I have to do even more tweaking in my searches just to get it to fucking stop, it wouldnt even tell me if the word “Am” is a Pronoun or not, I had to scroll through a bunch of unrelated shit before giving up and using google. What the fuck :(
  
  Thirdly, there is no third complaint really- im just getting really really sick and tired of DDG giving me random/unrelated shit. maybe im not doin something right, idk, but its frustrating as fuck.
  
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  - Varyk@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    do you mean it doesn’t correct your misspellings as you type or it doesn’t correct your search terms?
    
    mine corrects my search terms if i type colude instead of collude or something,
    
    " is am a pronoun" gives me “am is not a pronoun”.
    
    Image
    
    there are a few results under that mentioning that “am” should be used with pronouns, heavily implying that it isn’t a pronoun itself.
    
    that’s a tricky search because “am” is such a small and common word, I get more direct results (after the direct answer from duckassist) If I put quotes around am, like
    
    is “am” a pronoun?
    
    sorry it didn’t work out for you, are you trying other browsers or reverting to the googs?
    
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scytale@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Startpage is basically just proxied google search results. It also filters out the AI response bullshit.

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Anticorp@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

No, I don’t want Kagi either, I dont wanna to pay a subscription for a search engine just to get what I want.

Well

I tried all the others, Ecosia, Duckduckgo, etc… But they usually fall flat cus they just don’t have some of the quirks that Google has that I like, specifically when it comes to image search.

Consider Kagi again. It’s worth it.

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- Cock_Inspecting_Asexual@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Why does everything gotta be subscription based tho!
  
  I just dont really wanna buy into that kinda stuff, even if it is good. Soon my ability to use the internet (not wifi) is gonna be subscription based :(
  
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  - Anticorp@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Internet access is already subscription-based. I agree with your sentiment. I hate subscription based pricing. But for me, all the other search engines had become so annoying that I was constantly displeased throughout the day, instead of enjoying my time online. So I tried Kagi, and it was good enough to keep.
    
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Toes@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
DDG + Firefox ESR has been my combo. I find DDG does a poor job with local community or very recent results. I often need to switch to google for that. So I’m curious what people have to say. Before the war, I would have suggested Yandex but now I’m not so sure.

Firefox ESR is very customisable with the extensions. But I’m not aware of a solution to have interactive wallpapers. (You could probably make one if you’re a tinkerer.)

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boletus@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Wallpaper engine for interactive wallpapers.

There’s mechvibes for system wise keyboard sounds (but you can’t do better than just having a good keyboard)

I’m sure there’s a Firefox extension for filters, but most browsers focus on actually being good browsers over random gimmicks so you might be out of luck. Value your privacy and your data

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Soapbox1858@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
You should give Vivaldi a try for a customizable browser. It has tons of functional customization, perhaps less cosmetic stuff than GX though.

As far as search engines go, I got nothing. I am fairly agnostic about them. If one isn’t giving me the desired results, I just try others.

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Voltage@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Vivaldi browser has a LOT of customisability options but Im not sure if you can make it look like OperaGX

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cheese_greater@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Brave Search is good and it sometimes had a highlights summary or something. Enough of the time it poofs the answer like that and i can move on

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NutinButNet@hilariouschaos.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Have you tried Bing? I’ve been using Bing for over a decade now as my default search engine and while people give it crap, I’ve only had to go to Google a handful of times over this span of time and even then, I can’t remember a time that Google had what I was looking for either.

Bing is customizable so you can get rid of some of the fluff that comes with searches that you don’t want that bloats your results. Like you can get rid of the colorful background, the trending news sections, the Copilot LLM results, etc.

One plus that Bing Image search has had over Google for many years now is the ability to let you see the full screen image without doing any funky stuff. Like when you just want to load the jpg/png in the browser without the Google/Bing banner surrounding it…Bing Image search lets you do that with the click of a button. Google removed this feature years ago which was so shitty.

It’s not perfect, not like old Google perfect, but that combined with an adblocker like uBlock Origin and my PiHole works for me to remove from sponsored results (not all, unfortunately).

It has its own set of trackers too. I’m no fan of Microsoft and know this, but we’re at the bottom of the barrel with decent search engines anymore.

I like Bing for the other perks like trending news, Bing Rewards (no joke, I have cashed in for over $400 worth of free stuff from a PC VR headset to fast food gift cards just from doing daily searches), and I use Copilot from time to time as a quick ChatGPT alternative (using ChatGPT, but doesn’t require an account to use so good for a quick Incognito session if needed) and also nice with the history under your account. I prefer to use Copilot in Bing than the Windows app since I don’t want that crap installed to my computer and would rather keep it to the browser.

You may also check into extensions for whatever browser you end up going with. There are a few extensions that can help customize your search results like easily removing a website from the results, for example.

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- trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  DDG is anonymized bing
  
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  - NutinButNet@hilariouschaos.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yeah but it’s a different experience, if that’s what OP is looking for in terms of how it delivers the search results.
    
    But if this is solely about the quality of results, then yeah, my recommendation for Bing is irrelevant.
    
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  - Cock_Inspecting_Asexual@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    why does everyone keep suggesting ddg =m=
    
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juliorapido@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Qwant maybe?

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- Cock_Inspecting_Asexual@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  ok- how tf do I set this as my default browser and also sign into it… its a bit confusing to figure out??
  
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  - juliorapido@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    And signing in is a mystery 😂
    
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  - juliorapido@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    On Firefox you can set it as default. On iOS there is an app to convert the search query.
    
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