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Google is the king of search. We automatically know what someone means when they tell us to “Google it”. But the company that once used the slogan “Don’t Be Evil” has become an international tech giant guilty of many evil deeds, including censorship on political grounds, tracking user’s search results, election interference, and selling our data to the highest bidders. Some security experts have said Google was founded with money from the CIA. And Senator Ted Cruz called Google the “most dangerous company on the face of the planet”. Google has become the first, and often only, search engine for almost everyone, but there are many other great options available, and with the risks associated with using Google, there’s really no reason to use it any longer.

If you want private, uncensored searches, switch to one of these alternatives. They all give good search results and they have solid privacy policies to protect their users.

Brave Search is a new player in the search engine game. Brought to you by the same people as the Brave browser, this search engine mainly pulls its results from Bing, but they’re in the process of expanding their own in-house search capabilities to reduce dependence on others and hopefully provide truly uncensored results. My early experiences with Brave Search have been impressive enough that I’ve made them one of my top three “go to” search engines. Brave is based in the United States and is subject to US laws and surveillance. That may scare some people away.

MetaGer is a German search site developed and run by the nonprofit organization, SUMA-EV–Association for Free Access to Knowledge. MetaGer protects against censorship by combining the results of multiple search engines. They use an anonymizing proxy to protect your privacy and they don’t track you or retain your search history. Metager is another one of my top three “go to” search engines.

Mojeek is a UK based search company that describes itself as “the alternative search engine that puts the people who use it first.” Mojeek was the first privacy respecting search engine and the only one that provides completely independent search results instead of simply harvesting results from other search engines. Mojeek is my default search engine, backed up by Brave Search and Metager.

Qwant is based in France and says their keywords are “privacy and neutrality”. Qwant encrypts your search requests, they don’t retain any personal data and they don’t track you. I’ve found their search results to be a little strange at times but if the other search engines aren’t giving you the results you’re looking for, give Qwant a try.

Gibiru is a California based search company that offers 256-bit HTTPS encryption, no logging of any kind, no cookies, no data selling, an option to add proxy/VPN, no ad tracking, and a strong commitment to privacy. When you do a search on Gibiru, at the top of the page you’ll see two tabs: one for ‘all results’, and another for ‘censored results’. As far as I’ve been able to determine, the censored results are basically what Google would show you. The ‘all results’ tab shows results from Google and any other search engines Gibiru pulls from, but it’s unclear what those other search engines are. Another neat feature from Gibiru is their Wormhole™ mobile app, which is a “browser-less application that allows you to surf the web completely anonymously with absolutely zero record of your searches and sites you visit. When you use the Gibiru Wormhole™, sites you visit are opened and viewable right thru the App.” The app is available for Android and Apple iOS.

Presearch is a newer entry to the world of search and it’s gained a lot of attention. They market themselves as a decentralized search engine powered by blockchain technology, and they offer a way to earn Pre tokens by doing searches. A strong feature anyone can appreciate is that you decide if want your search run on the Presearch engine or your choice of several external engines, including Google and DuckDuckGo. It’s all customizable which is something you can’t do with any other search engine that I’m aware of. Presearch is based in Ontario Canada, which may cause concern due to Canada’s continuing slide toward totalitarian Fascism.

SwissCows is a well respected search engine with solid privacy policies. Being based in Switzerland makes them safe from American or EU interference. Their top selling point is their family-friendly approach to search results. You won’t see any porn or other sexual content, which is great if you have children but potentially annoying if you live alone. Also at the moment they are collecting money to help Ukraine, a nation that is at least partially controlled by neo-Nazi’s and is currently at war with Russia. That’s a deal breaker for me.

DuckDuckGo is a popular choice based in the United States but I don't recommend it. While most review sites give them a thumbs up, over the years there have been many questions raised about just how honest the company is. They also have business agreements with Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft, none of which are known for protecting privacy or human rights. The website Techrights.org has an entire page on why no one should be using DuckDuckGo. Read it and then decide for yourself. In 2022 DuckDuckGo made the controversial decision to begin filtering search results to block or downplay information from Russia. Many free-speech advocates said they would leave DuckDuckGo because of this new policy. 

Yippy has gone out of business since the first version of this article was written. The domain now redirects to DuckDuckGo.

I’m often asked about a few other search engines that I haven’t featured before in my blog. Two are Startpage and Search Encrypt. Both are owned at least partially by advertising tech companies, meaning there’s no real guarantee your personal information won’t be tracked and sold to the highest bidder. Another is Ecosia, an environmentally focused German company that plants trees around the world. While their search results are good, their privacy policy causes concern. According to RestorePrivacy.com, “Ecosia collects all search queries and then anonymizes this data after seven days. They do a fair amount of data collecting through website analytics, including your IP address, browser agent, location, and more. And Ecosia assigns a Bing tracking ID to every user.” Still, if their environmental work is more important to you than your privacy, this may be an option you can feel good about.

Another one many people ask about is Searx. While this one has a lot of strong features, a major weakness is that Searx doesn’t have its own official server. You either install Searx on your own server, or you use public “instances”, which is where people you probably don’t know install Searx on their own server and then allow you, and everyone else, to use it. The problem is there’s no way to know what information the instance operators are collecting from you or what they’ll do with it. For that reason I can’t recommend it unless you control the server its installed on.

Times have changed and your choices have grown. Stop feeding the abusive tech giants that don’t respect you or your privacy. Make your next search a safer one.