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.

  • NutinButNetEnglish
    1·
    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.