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

Google is astir to look truly different, and if you’re not a instrumentality of the AI Overviews feature, past you’re not going to similar what’s coming.

At the Google I/O 2026 keynote this week, the institution announced that it is overhauling Search to clasp a conversational, AI-driven approach, adjacent inviting users to enlist AI agents to automatically notify them if, for example, their favourite set were to spell connected tour.

“This is the biggest upgrade to our iconic hunt container since its debut implicit 25 years ago,” said Elizabeth Reid, person of the Search enactment astatine Google.

Now, erstwhile you hunt connected Google, you’re fixed the enactment from the commencement to usage AI mode. Even if you opt not to usage AI mode, you mightiness get a hunt effect with an AI Overview, which volition present see a chat container for you to inquire follow-up questions. Once you unfastened the chat box, Google begins to look much similar ChatGPT than the hunt motor that’s ingrained itself into our lives for decades.

This announcement didn’t elicit the absorption that Google would’ve hoped for. Instead, galore users spot this arsenic yet different illustration of a tech institution squeezing AI agents and chatbots into everything it can, making it intolerable to navigate the net without encountering a chatbot. Especially aft the rocky rollout of Google’s AI Overviews — retrieve erstwhile Google told radical to look into the sun? — users are not anxious for different adjustment.

Image Credits:Google

On Google’s video announcing the Search updates, 1 commenter wrote, “this is the champion advertisement for letting radical cognize it’s clip to get a antithetic hunt engine.”

They marque a bully point. The caller Google Search, which Reid describes arsenic “AI hunt done and through,” is definite to alienate users. Generative AI aside, immoderate users person besides grown weary of Google for its sheer dominance — a U.S. District Court ruled successful 2024 that Google had acted illegally to support a monopoly successful online search.

If you’re funny astir alternate hunt engines, you’re successful the close place. Here are immoderate places to commencement (or, clasp chaos and spot wherever Open Web Engine takes you).

Kagi

Before we were annoyed by Google’s AI Overview, we were annoyed by ads. Ads are non-negotiable for Google — that’s however Google Search makes money. But if a hunt motor were to run without ads, could it inactive marque money?

That’s what Kagi is trying to accomplish. For $5 per period — oregon $10 for unlimited searches — you tin entree an ad-free hunt motor without AI overviews.

Kagi isn’t conscionable ad-free Google. The hunt motor besides lets users customize their hunt acquisition by letting them filter definite websites and refine hunt results with “lenses.” If you’re successful school, for example, you tin usage Kagi’s world lens to find diary articles astir a topic, alternatively than blog posts.

If you find Google’s AI Overviews utile from clip to time, past you tin usage Kagi’s AI-powered “Quick Answer” diagnostic to summarize an reply to your hunt and see links to its sources. But if you don’t privation these AI summaries, conjecture what? You don’t person to make them.

DuckDuckGo

Maybe you don’t privation to wage to hunt worldly online. That’s understandable. DuckDuckGo offers a escaped hunt motor that makes wealth by selling ads, but dissimilar Google, it doesn’t cod idiosyncratic information successful the signifier of search, browsing, and acquisition history. Instead DuckDuckGo chooses what ads to service based connected the taxable of your hunt — truthful if you hunt for performance tickets, you mightiness spot an advertisement for SeatGeek.

Like galore alternate hunt engines, DuckDuckGo has an interface that’s reminiscent of Google — and similar Google, it tin show an AI-generated reply to a question successful your hunt results. But if that bothers you, DuckDuckGo allows you to wholly opt retired of AI features successful the settings menu.

Startpage

While DuckDuckGo has its ain abstracted hunt scale from Google, Startpage is simply a proxy for Google.

This means that Startpage acts arsenic a middleman betwixt you and the tech giant. When you hunt for thing connected Startpage, the institution strips idiosyncratic information similar your IP code from your query, sends it to Google via the cloud, and returns the accusation to you. So, it’s Google without Google knowing who you are. The downside is, well, it’s inactive Google. At slightest Startpage lets you crook disconnected AI features.

&udm=14

What if you took Startpage and made it simpler? The hunt motor &udm=14 is named for the drawstring of characters it appends to each of your searches connected Google.

If you adhd &udm=14 to your Google searches, you’ll get the aforesaid Google results, lone without an AI overview. But doing that yourself aft each hunt is beauteous annoying. That’s wherefore &udm=14 does it for you automatically.

The developer adjacent enactment the codification connected GitHub truthful you tin tally your ain mentation of &udm=14 if that’s your thing.

If you’re acrophobic astir privacy, past you’d astir apt opt for Startpage implicit &udm=14, but some volition fundamentally get you AI-free Google.

Brave

Brave offers some a browser and a hunt engine. Since the browser is built atop Chromium, which is the aforesaid open-source basal arsenic Google Chrome, you tin usage Chrome extensions wrong the Brave browser. So, if you don’t privation to usage Google Chrome, but you can’t relation without your LastPass plug-in, Brave could beryllium for you.

In presumption of search, Brave allows users to use definite third-party “Goggles” (not Googles!) to their searches, which curate the results. These see “News from the Right,” “News from the Left,” “Tech Blogs,” and immoderate different much niche options, similar “Hacker News/1k short,” which prioritizes communal domains referenced connected Y-Combinator’s Hacker News forum, but without the 1,000 astir fashionable domains, truthful it omits much mainstream sites. Then, there’s “No Pinterest,” which is beauteous self-explanatory (and funny).

And yes, Brave does fto you toggle AI features connected and off. There’s nary crushed you can’t bash this, Google.

Ecosia

Like Brave, Ecosia besides offers some a browser and a hunt engine, and it’s besides built atop Chromium, meaning that your Chrome plug-ins should enactment connected Ecosia too. As its sanction suggests, Ecosia’s main gully is that it’s expected to beryllium much eco-friendly than different hunt platforms.

Ecosia makes wealth from ads, but it donates astir 80% of its income to tree-planting initiatives astir the world. Tree-planting tin sometimes beryllium a red emblem for greenwashing, but Ecosia works with communities progressive successful section reforestation efforts, publishes monthly financial reports for transparency, and blogs astir the existent interaction of its efforts.