Data on search engine market share is available, but I wonder what that looks like for Lemmy users in particular, who I would assume lean more technical than the average user, so probably use DuckDuckGo and alternates more than Google.
I use a mix of DuckDuckGo and Kagi. I’ll also use ChatGPT, which can be good if you’re careful to verify the answers it gives you as a check against hallucinations. It’s useful for short, direct answers without ads or SEO bullshit.
This article on Ars (and if you’re not a subscriber, you absolutely should be, as they are the best tech journalists out there) inspired the question: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/google-admits-reddit-protests-make-it-harder-to-find-helpful-search-results
Fucking Reddit. Enshittification ruins everything.
try brave search
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/22/business/brave-brendan-eich-covid-19.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich#Appointment_to_CEO_and_resignation
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21283769/brave-browser-affiliate-links-crypto-privacy-ceo-apology
He said brave search. It has an independent index, so that’s a pretty notable difference from something like Duckduckgo which IIRC uses Bing under the hood. The googles features is also a really cool idea! I just wish there was a way to make private googles for just yourself.
DDG has its own search taking from a lot of sources; it’s not just bing