Want to Ditch Google Search? Try These 5 Other Free Search Engines

Google Search is shifting toward an agentic AI era, combining search with advanced AI tools. Privacy-focused alternatives can provide more privacy by blocking trackers and limiting data collection. Brave blocks trackers and can anonymously fall back to Google when results are limited, and it also offers features such as a VPN, a crypto wallet, and an AI assistant named Leo without requiring an account. DuckDuckGo blocks external trackers and does not track user activity to personalize results, and it has expanded free tools including App Tracking Protection for Android and its own VPN. Using these alternatives may require more specific queries, and some benefits may be reduced when used inside Chrome.

"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."

"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."

"DuckDuckGo is another privacy-focused search engine, and it has touted itself as the anti-Google. While Google collects and stores data on you to create personalized search results, DuckDuckGo doesn't track what you do and actively blocks external trackers. Over the past few years, DuckDuckGo also expanded the free tools it offers to people. Now it offers tools like an App Tracking Protection for Android users, its own VPN -- that our experts said was great"

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