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.
I just signed up for Kagi based on some of the comments in this thread. I’m looking forward to seeing how that goes.
After trying Ecosia and Startpage for a while, I’ve always gone back to Google eventually. I’ve never liked the results from DuckDuckGo and always had to !g it. This may say more about me not willing to change my habits or tastes than finding faults with these search engines and learning to use them better. However with Reddit shitting on everything for me now I’m willing to try out a whole bunch of new things and seeing how those work.