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

Google is about to look very different, and if you’re not a fan of the AI ​​Summaries feature, then you’re not going to like what’s coming.

During the Google I/O 2026 keynote this week, the company announced that it is revamping Search to embrace a conversational, AI-driven approach, even inviting users to enable AI agents to automatically notify them when, for example, their favorite band goes on tour.

“This is the biggest upgrade to our iconic search box since its debut more than 25 years ago,” said Elizabeth Reid, Google search leader.

Now when you search on Google, you will be given the option to use AI mode from the start. Even if you choose not to use AI mode, you may get a search result with an AI overview, which now includes a chat box where you can ask follow-up questions. As soon as you open the chat box, Google starts to look more like ChatGPT than the search engine that has been embedded in our lives for decades.

This announcement did not provoke the reaction Google had hoped for. Instead, many users see this as yet another example of a tech company using AI agents and chatbots to their limits, making it impossible to navigate the web without encountering a chatbot. Especially after the rocky rollout of Google’s AI Overviews – remember when Google told people to stare into the sun? — users aren’t eager for another tweak.

On Google’s video announcing the search updates, one commenter wrote, “This is the best ad to let people know it’s time to use a different search engine.”

They make a good point. The new Google Search, which Reid describes as “AI search through and through,” is sure to alienate users. Beyond the generative AI, some users have also grown tired of Google for its sheer dominance: A US court ruled in 2024 that Google had acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in online search.

If you’re curious about alternative search engines, you’ve come to the right place. Here are some places to start (or embrace chaos and see where 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. This is how Google Search makes money. But if a search engine worked without ads, could it still make money?

That’s what Kagi tries to achieve. For $5 a month – or $10 for unlimited search – you can access an ad-free search engine without AI overviews.

Kagi is not only ad-free Google. The search engine also allows users to customize their search experience by filtering certain websites and refining search results with ‘lenses’. For example, if you’re in school, you can use Kagi’s academic lens to find magazine articles on a topic, rather than blog posts.

If you find Google’s AI summaries useful from time to time, you can use Kagi’s AI-powered ‘Quick Answer’ feature to summarize an answer to your search query and include links to its sources. But if you don’t want these AI summaries, guess what? You don’t have to generate them.

DuckDuckGo

Maybe you don’t want to pay to look for things online. That’s understandable. DuckDuckGo offers a free search engine that makes money by selling ads, but unlike Google, it doesn’t collect user data in the form of search, browsing and purchase history. Instead, DuckDuckGo chooses which ads to show based on the subject of your search. So if you’re looking for concert tickets, you might see an ad for SeatGeek.

Like many alternative 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 that bothers you, DuckDuckGo totally lets you do that opt out of AI features in the settings menu.

Homepage

While DuckDuckGo has its own separate search index from Google, Startpage is a proxy for Google.

This means that Homepage acts as an intermediary between you and the tech giant. When you search for something on Startpage, the company removes personal information like your IP address from your search query, sends it to Google via the cloud, and then sends the information back to you. So it’s Google without Google knowing who you are. The downside is that it’s still Google. At least Startpage lets you disable AI features.

&udm=14

What if you took Startpage and made it simpler? The search engine &udm=14 is named for the string of characters it adds to all your Google searches.

If you add &udm=14 to your Google searches, you’ll get the same Google results, just without the AI ​​overview. But doing that yourself after every search is quite annoying. That’s why &udm=14 does this automatically for you.

The developer even put the code on it GitHub so you can use your own version of &udm=14 if that’s your thing.

If you’re concerned about privacy, you’d probably choose Startpage over &udm=14, but both essentially give you AI-free Google.

Brave

Brave offers both a browser and a search engine. Since the browser is built on top of Chromium, which is the same open source foundation as Google Chrome, you can use Chrome extensions within the Brave browser. So if you don’t want to use Google Chrome but can’t function without your LastPass plugin, Brave might be for you.

On the search side, Brave allows users to apply certain third-party “Goggles” (not Googles!) to their searches, which curate the results. These include ‘News from the Right’, ‘News from the Left’, ‘Tech Blogs’ and some other more niche options, such as ‘Hacker News/1k short’, which prioritizes general domains referenced on Y-Combinator’s Hacker News forum, but omits the 1,000 most popular domains, so more mainstream sites are left out. Then there’s “No Pinterest,” which is self-explanatory (and funny).

And yes, Brave allows you to enable and disable AI features. There’s no reason why you can’t do this, Google.

Ecosia

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

Ecosia makes money from advertising, but donates about 80% of its revenue to tree planting initiatives around the world. Planting trees can sometimes be a… red flag for greenwashingbut Ecosia works with communities involved in local reforestation efforts, publishing monthly financial reports for transparency, and blogs about the actual impact of his efforts.