Six search engines worth trying now that Google isn’t Google anymore

Google is about to look different, and if you’re not a fan AI graphics look, then you don’t like what’s coming.

Pa Google I/O 2026 In a big news this week, the company announced that it is redesigning Search to support conversations, powered by AI, even asking users to sign up for AI assistants to notify them automatically if, for example, their favorite team goes out for a chat.

“This is the biggest upgrade to our search engine since it launched 25 years ago,” said Elizabeth Reid, head of Google Search.

Now, when you search on Google, you are given the opportunity from the start to use AI features. Even if you choose not to use the AI ​​feature, you can access search results with the AI ​​Overview, which will now include a chat box to ask follow-up questions. When you open the chat box, Google starts to look more like ChatGPT than the search engine that has been a part of our lives for years.

This announcement did not produce what Google might have hoped for. In fact, many users see this as yet another example of a tech company squeezing AI assistants and chatbots into everything they can, making it impossible to navigate the internet without encountering chatbots. Especially after the stone release of Google’s AI Overviews – remember when Google told people to look at the sun? – users don’t need any other changes.

On Google’s video announcing the Search update, one commenter wrote, “this is the perfect ad to let people know it’s time to find another search engine.”

He makes a good point. Google’s new search, which Reid describes as “AI search and beyond,” is sure to confuse users. Generative AI aside, some users are also fed up with Google because of its dominance – the US District Court ruled in 2024 that Google did illegal activities self-governing for internet searches.

If you want to know about other search engines, you are in the right place. Here are some places to start (or, embrace the chaos and see where Open the Web Engine taking it).

Do the same

Before we were outraged by Google’s AI Overview, we were outraged by ads. Ads can’t be negotiated with Google – that’s how Google Search makes money. But if a search engine could work without ads, would it still make money?

That’s what Do the same are trying to achieve. For $5 a month – or $10 for unlimited searches – you can get an ad-free search engine with no AI explanations.

It’s not just Google without ads. Search engines also allow users to customize their search results by allowing them to filter other websites and refine the results with “glasses”. If you’re in school, for example, you can use Kagi’s academic lens to find news articles, not just blog posts.

If you find Google’s AI Overviews useful from time to time, then you can use Kagi’s AI Quick Answer to summarize the answer in your search and include links to its sources. But if you don’t want these AI tricks, guess what? You don’t have to make it up.

DuckDuckGo

You probably don’t want to pay to look things up online. It makes sense. DuckDuckGo offers a free search engine that makes money by selling ads, but unlike Google, it does not collect user data in the form of search, browsing, and purchase history. Instead DuckDuckGo chooses which ads to send based on the topic of your search – so when you search for concert tickets, you might see SeatGeek ads.

Like many search engines, DuckDuckGo has an interface reminiscent of Google – and like Google, it can display an AI-generated answer to a question in your search results. But if this is bothering you, DuckDuckGo gives you the perfect solution select the AI ​​mode in the settings menu.

Home page

Although DuckDuckGo has its own index separate from Google, Startpage is a Google proxy.

This means that Home page they act as a middle man between you and the tech giant. When you search for something on Startpage, the company extracts personal information like your IP address from your query, sends it to Google via the cloud, and returns that information to you. So, it’s Google without Google knowing who you are. The bad thing is, it’s still Google. At least Startpage gives you the option to turn off the AI ​​feature.

&udm=14

What if you took Startpage and made it simple? Search engine &udm=14 they are mentioned in the list of characters that add to all your searches on Google.

If you add &udm=14 to your Google search results, you’ll get the same Google results, without the AI ​​overview. But doing that alone every time you search is frustrating. That’s why &udm=14 does this for you automatically.

The programmer recoded it GitHub so you can run your own &udm=14 if that’s your case.

If you are concerned about privacy, then you can choose Startpage over &udm=14, but both will give you free Google AI.

Brave

Brave provides a browser and a search engine. Since the browser is built on top of Chromium, which is an open source platform like Google Chrome, you can use Chrome extensions inside the Chrome browser. So, if you don’t want to use Google Chrome, but you can’t work without your LastPass plugin, Brave can be for you.

In terms of search, Brave allows users to use “Goggles” (not Google!) for their searches, which track results. These include “News from the Right,” “News from the Left,” “Tech Blogs,” and some other options, such as “Hacker News/1k short,” which prioritizes the domains mentioned on Y-Combinator’s Hacker News forum, but without the 1,000 most popular domains, so it leaves out many pages. Then, there’s “No Pinterest,” which is self-explanatory (and fun).

And yes, Brave allows you to turn the AI ​​feature on and off. There’s no reason you can’t do this, Google.

Ecosia

Like Brave, Ecosia it also offers a browser and search engine, and it’s built on top of Chromium, meaning your Chrome plugins should work on Ecosia too. As its name suggests, the main draw of Ecosia is that it is supposed to be more environmentally friendly than other search platforms.

Ecosia makes money from advertising, but gives about 80% of its money to tree planting projects around the world. Planting trees is sometimes a a red flag for greenwashingbut Ecosia works with communities involved in reforestation, it is published monthly financial reports for transparency, and blogs of the actual results of his efforts.