Why are people still using Google for search? I frequently hear complaints that Google's search results have become worse and worse over the past several years. DuckDuckGo isn't perfect, but I generally get good results from it, and they claim to respect your privacy.
I've also recently been trying out Kagi (invite-only beta, will eventually be a paid search engine), and I've so far been extremely happy with their search results. I'm a bit uncomfortable with it; since it requires a login, they can easily tie search history to you even if you use private browsing or a VPN. (They claim they don't do this, but I'd rather not have to trust.)
I switched to duckduckgo as my default search engine as a matter of principle, but the results are regularly irrelevant, sparse or not recent. If changing search engines was lower friction, i’d be back on Google in less than a day.
Odd, I switched to DDG 2 or 3 years ago, and probably have had to fall back to Google a single-digit percentage of the time when DDG's results weren't up to snuff. But everyone's searches are different, I suppose.
I’ve been really impressed with Kagi. For desktop search I find it easily the equal of Google if not better - it filters out the dreck much better than Google does. I’d tried Bing and DDG before but Kagi is the first one that hasn’t had me crawling back to Google within days.
For mobile search, unfortunately, it’s not there yet - Google has such a commanding lead in POIs, opening hours and the like.
I've also recently been trying out Kagi (invite-only beta, will eventually be a paid search engine), and I've so far been extremely happy with their search results. I'm a bit uncomfortable with it; since it requires a login, they can easily tie search history to you even if you use private browsing or a VPN. (They claim they don't do this, but I'd rather not have to trust.)