Google Is a Monopoly. Should You Use Another Search Engine?

image via New Scientist

October 2, 2024, 10:45 AM

• •Google Search is facing increasing scrutiny over its dominance of the search engine market.
• •There are a handful of other search engines available, including Bing, DuckDuckGo, Brave Search and Ecosia.
• •The effectiveness of these other search engines varies, but they can be a good option for users who are looking for alternatives to Google.

Google Search is getting worse, or at least we are seeing it become less useful. There are a handful of less popular options, such as Brave Search, which, like DuckDuckGo, emphasizes privacy and limits tracking of user data. Some search engines are aimed primarily at the non-English-speaking world: Google’s Russian-language competitor is Yandex; the Chinese equivalent is Baidu. Some newer search engines employ generative AI to provide answers. These include Perplexity, which has been accused of plagiarism by Forbes and other news outlets. Haider cautions that AI search engines, in general, can offer misleading answers because they lack a savvy human’s media literacy—leading to results that promote climate change denial, for instance.

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