GoKawiilOn May 19, Google announced at its Google I/O developers conference it was making major steps in combining Google Search with its advanced AI tools. Robby Stein, Google's vice president of product for Search, said at the time that Search is moving into an "agentic" era. But if you don't like the direction Google Search is heading, there are other search engines you can try for free.
These search engines have some advantages over Google, like more privacy. But the main drawback to these alternate search engines is they may lack comprehensive results. That means you might have to look through more results on these other search engines compared to with Google. I found it helpful to be more specific with my search queries when using these other engines.
It's also important to note that even if you use these search engines within Google's Chrome browser, you may not get the full benefit of some of these other engines. Here are five other free search engines to use instead of Google Search.
Brave
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Brave is a privacy-focused search engine that blocks trackers, and it uses Google as a fallback option. What that means is if your Brave search doesn't return a lot of results, you can enable the search engine to anonymously check Google for the same query.
Brave also offers other features, like a VPN, a crypto wallet and its own AI assistant named Leo. And Brave said your AI usage is private and secure as well. You don't even need to create or log into an account to use Leo.
You can try Brave for free.
DuckDuckGo
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