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Diversifying your search engine portfolio
Author: Aaron P. MacSween
Published: 2025-10-08
I recently wrote about how Google is abusing their dominant market position to control the future of the web, but I held off on making any practical recommendations on how to reduce their power because that article was quite long enough as it was. I'll keep this one (relatively) short and focus on one thing: search.
What search means to Google
Different sources provide slightly different figures, but most that I was able to find suggest that Alphabet (Google's parent company) makes something like 80% of its revenue by showing ads. A very significant portion of that comes from sponsored listings on its search engine:
Search is Google’s most lucrative unit. In 2020, the company generated $104 billion in “search and other” revenues, making up 71% of Google’s ad revenue and 57% of Alphabet’s total revenue.
The way that works is that different companies pay Google to include links to their pages whenever you search for something. Then, each time you search for something through their engine Google runs a little auction to see which of those companies will pay the most to show one of their ads for your search terms.
Google typically charges ad clients based on a cost-per-click or cost-per-impression model. Simply viewing an ad is worth less than clicking it, but even the cost of just a fraction of a cent per view can add up to a lot of money when you control the majority of the world's search traffic (79.1% as of March 2025).
How Google's search compares to other search engines
Google search used to be quite a bit better than their competition, but over time they got confident and a little too greedy. In 2020, they conducted some internal quality studies to determine whether worse search results would cause them to lose users. Court documents which remain available on the Internet Archive document their findings:
The experiment tested a quality decline of 1 IS point, a measure of search quality equivalent to the loss of two times the information contained on all of Wikipedia. See id.; Tr. at 6323:12-17 (Nayak) (“If we took Wikipedia out of our index, completely out of our index, then that would lead to an IS loss of roughly about a half point.”); id. at 4771:4–4773:9 (Whinston) (describing this experiment). This quality-reduction experiment correlated with only a 0.66– 0.99% decline in global search revenue. UPX1082 at 294. In short, this study demonstrates that a significant quality depreciation by Google would not result in a significant loss of revenues.
Google denies that they are deliberately worsening the quality of their search results in order to show more ads and profit more off of the same number of search sessions, but a variety of sources suggest that the quality of their results have degraded significantly since that internal study was performed. That same court document indicates that Microsoft's Bing is pretty much on par with Google, at least on Desktop devices:
Although Google significantly outperforms all rivals on mobile devices, Bing’s search quality on desktop measures up to Google’s. See Tr. at 6048:12-15 (Whinston) (Bing’s quality “is very close on desktop” to Google); UPX238 at 667 (“Bing is comparable on desktop . . . and leads in several desktop verticals[.]”); UPX260 at 681 (Bing is comparable to Google for desktop result relevance and outperforms Google on desktop for overall preference).
This is speculation on my part, but I'd expect the difference in performance on mobile devices to come from a relatively higher amount of context due to surveillance via their control of the popular Android operating system. It does not suggest that Google simply has a better algorithm than their competition, as they are so fond of claiming.
Using a different search engines
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the version of Chrome which is available on Android only offers a very limited selection of alternative search engines:
...and in what I'm sure is yet another intentional design choice on their part, this configures your default search engine. Most other browsers allow you to configure any search engine you want by specifying an arbitrary web-server address, and then allow you to optionally choose between your configured selections on a per-search basis. The drop-down menu shown in the screenshot below demonstrates how Firefox for Android goes even further by linking directly to its search settings menu from the same drop-down menu:
Once there, it's possible to add new search engines and toggle which options should be shown in the "This time search in:" menu.
Similar workflows are included in practically every other browser, including Chrome on Desktop. So, while I would recommend setting your default browser to something other than Google, as long as you choose a browser that provides this very basic feature you can instead choose the most relevant search engine depending on the subject of your query.
For instance, if you suspect that there's a Wikipedia page for a topic, you can directly use the wiki's search engine rather than searching through Google and hoping that they'll summarize the relevant Wikipedia page somewhere near the top of the page. Each time you choose to do this, you deprive Google of a little bit of advertizing revenue. Wikipedia even has a Help page ("Wikipedia: Searching from a web browser") which describes how to configure a variety of browsers to support this, in case it wasn't already enabled by default.
Other search providers
Many people have been advocating for years that people should boycott Google by changing their default search engine, however, this act is often framed as a sort of chore which is good for the broader online ecosystem but annoying or slightly inconvenient at best. Simply put, we are well past the point of other search engines being tolerable, and I personally find that my experience is much better off of Google's search than on it.
Most of the guides I've seen on the topic list a few alternatives, suggest that you choose one of them as your default search engine, and then leave it at that. That's certainly an effective way to cut off a part of Google's revenue, but personally I think you can really improve your experience of the web by making the most of many different search engine's respective strengths.
I've personally made it a bit of a hobby to reverse-engineer the search fields of different sites, regardless of whether their creators meant for that functionality to be used in that way.
I treat search as a game that is won by jumping directly to the resource I want in as few page loads as possible, and each engine I discover is like a power-up that makes a particular type of query more efficient. Some of these will be a little silly, but that just makes them a little more fun to use.
Each of the options listed below will include an address which includes the pattern %s.
If you configure your browser to use this address, it will
substitute the text of your search in the place of that pattern.
Most browsers will optionally let you assign a keyword for each such search engine,
allowing you to type that keyword before your search to
very quickly select it as the engine for that particular search,
as shown below:
I've included an overview of my curated list of search engines at the bottom of this article for your convenience, along with the keyword I've assigned to each one. What follows is a more detailed description of each entry in that table, and a possible motivation for using it.
DuckDuckGo (No-AI version)
I had been using DuckDuckGo as my default search engine for a while, but at some point they decided to get in on the wave of AI hype by sticking the output of their LLM above the search results that I actually wanted. Fortunately, I saw people online mentioning the availability of an alternative No-AI version of DuckDuckGo, so I now use that as my default option.
Since it's usually set as my default engine, I don't typically need to use the @duck keyword. Depending on what I happen to be researching, however, it's occasionally more effective to temporarily switch to a different default and use the keyword as necessary.
Wikipedia
@wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search/%s
Firefox includes Wikipedia as a default search engine,
but in case your preferred browser does not,
I would absolutely recommend adding it as an option.
This is one of the world's most frequently visited websites,
so I'll assume that it doesn't need any further introduction.
That said, multi-lingual individuals might find it helpful
to configure multiple versions of the wiki for the different
languages they speak, by modifying the en subdomain to
some other language code.
Wiktionary
Sometimes a quick definition of a word is more useful than its much more detailed wikipedia page, such as if I simply want to confirm that I'm spelling something correctly. These are also more likely to include audio recordings of the word's pronunciation than the corresponding Wikipedia entries.
Etymonline
@etymonline: https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=%s
Shout-out to Deborah Pickett for posting about Etymonline on the Fediverse and bringing it to my attention. I quickly added it as a search engine and now query it directly whenever I'm curious about how a word found its way into the English language.
The Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences
@integers: https://oeis.org/search?q=%s
This is admittedly the sort of site that will only be useful to particular types of people, but I suppose I fall within its target audience, and if you're reading this then you might too.
OEIS lets you input a comma-separated sequence of integers (whole numbers) and returns a list of known sequences which contain that as a subsequence. Search results will usually include the name of the sequence, the mathematical definition of the function which generates it, and a list of comments citing articles that reference the sequence.
So, if you've ever found yourself in a situation where you recognize that some numbers are probably a part of a pattern, but don't know what that pattern is called, then this is probably the best resource on the internet to start learning more about that pattern. For example: OEIS.org: 1,3,6,10 (Triangular numbers).
MDN
The Mozilla Developers Network offers detailed documentation pertaining to web development. Many of the terms used in web development are borrowed from natural language, or otherwise appear in other programming languages. Searching MDN tends to yield just the results which are useful for the web. I use it quite often, both for introductions to APIs I haven't yet used and to refresh my memory for those I have.
CanIUse
@caniuse: https://caniuse.com/?search=%s
CanIUse is also useful for web development, but it specifically focuses on the versions of a browser in which a particular API is supported, and what percentage of the current global browser market those versions represent. This is helpful for determining whether it's safe to start using a technology or if it's still somewhat experimental.
StackOverflow
@overflow: https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=%s
When I have a more complex programming problem that isn't easily answered by one of the above resources, then I'll check StackOverflow. If you're a programmer then you're almost certainly familiar with the site, and you've probably generated a fair amount of revenue for Google by using their engine to find StackOverflow answers that are applicable to your problems. Instead, I suggest going directly to the source.
Even if you're not a programmer, there is also a network of related sites called Stack Exchange through which people answer user-submitted questions about their revelant problem domain. So, if you're into philosophy you might consider adding:
@philosophy: https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/search?q=%s
...or if you're learning how to use Linux or similar Unix-like operating systems, then you might benefit from:
GitHub
GitHub is owned by Microsoft, and was recently absorbed into their AI division following the departure of their CEO. So, I want to clarify that I'm not advocating that anyone start hosting their code on the platform. I'll even point to the Software Freedom Conservancy's "Give Up GitHub" campaign which documents a variety of reasons why you might want to host code elsewhere.
With that said, they still host a lot of code, and I do find that I sometimes need to search for a particular project's source. Jumping directly to the search results lets me skip past all their desperate pleas to engage with their Copilot LLM.
Marginalia
@marginalia: https://marginalia-search.com/search?query=%s
Marginalia is an open-source search engine, meaning you could host it for yourself if you wanted to. If you don't want to bother with that, you can use the instance shown above, which is operated by its developer. The engine crawls lots of small blogs and checks their RSS feeds once per day, so it's a great way to explore the independent web for topics that are otherwise drowned out by SEO slop on more mainstream engines.
It also includes an "explore" page which displays a fresh selection of random websites each time the page is reloaded.
Explain XKCD
XKCD is a webcomic that's been running since 2005. It features so many jokes about niche topics in web culture and STEM subjects that a wiki was set up to provide the background information necessary to understand those jokes. Since XKCD itself doesn't have offer any search functionality, this wiki serves as a very effective way to find the most relevant XKCD comic for a given topic.
Some commonly referenced comics which you might have previously encountered include #327: "Exploits of a Mom", #927: "Standards", #2347: "Dependency", and #2501: "Average Familiarity".
The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay is a search engine for Torrent files, which are commonly used for media piracy. This is probably illegal where you live, and could get you in trouble unless you obscure your IP address with a VPN. As such, I am including it only as an example of a search engine which you definitely shouldn't use.
AnimeTosho
AnimeTosho.org is another search engine for torrents. Unlike The Pirate Bay, it is focused on anime, and is absolutely rife with pirated media. In short, it's another one you should definitely avoid at all costs.
Google Maps
@gmaps: https://maps.google.com/?q=%s
I've seen people access Google Maps by first looking up the location to which they want to navigate, then clicking onto the suggested Maps tab. This gives Google the opportunity to show some sponsored links and AI slop before you get where you actually want to go. Even if you're going to keep relying on some of Google's infrastructure, skipping that one step by searching directly on their map makes the process somewhat less profitable for them, and less disorienting for you.
OpenStreetMap
As its name implies, OpenStreetMap uses data which is shared under an open license. The quality of its results depends on whether people in a given location have kept the map of their local area up to date, but it has an active community in many parts of the world and is certainly worth trying.
Youtube
I don't know whether searching Youtube will have any meaningful impact on Google's revenue, but I do occasionally have to search for something in particular and doing so directly lets me skip the front page's suggested content.
IMDB
I find this very helpful whenever I can't remember the name of some actor who I know was in some movie.
TV Tropes
The tropes wiki describes common plot devices and story beats that occur in different kinds of fiction, which could be really interesting if you're into that sort of thing.
iNaturalist
iNaturalist describes itself as an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature. People from around the world use it to share pictures, audio, and video of a variety of living things. I use it to identify plants, animals, and fungi in the natural environment around me, and having it set up as a search engine makes it just that much easier to identify the different species I observe.
KnowYourMeme
Even the most terminally online of us occasionally encounter an unfamiliar meme, and in cases like this a meme search engine can help make sense of what the heck our online friends are talking about.
Urban Dictionary
This one has a lot of pretty offensive content, but if you're trying to understand an offensive discussion then you might need a dictionary of terms that won't show up on wiktionary or even KnowYourMeme. You'll probably be happier if you avoid this one, but I'll let you decide that for yourself.
@reddit: https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=%s
Again, I'll note that I'm not endorsing reddit as a platform, but for certain topics it can be worthwhile to search here instead of trying to sort through the AI slop that is often served by general-purpose search engines.
Wttr.in
@wttr: https://wttr.in/%s?m
Wttr.in (source available on GitHub) is primarily designed to serve three-day weather forecasts to command-line clients, but it also works in the browser, and I find it sometimes loads significantly faster than more full-featured weather forecasting websites.
The search pattern specified above hard-codes an option to use metric units, and the project's README specifies how to change other settings like the language or encoding of its results.
Conclusion
Google became as powerful as they are by establishing a monopoly over search. I absolutely suggest that people switch to another engine as their default provider, however, if everyone were to follow that recommendation and switch to something like DuckDuckGo then all we would have accomplished is to change which company holds a monopoly. While one could certainly make a convincing argument that it would be preferable for a company other than Google to achieve such a position, I think it would be even better if noone held so much power.
A better solution, therefore, is for everyone to develop a habit of sourcing their information from a broad range of sources. I hope this article has demonstrated that this is not only possible, but that it can actually make navigating the web much more enjoyable.
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