Quitting Google search: DuckDuckGo proves a viable alternative. Photo / Getty Images
Quitting Google search: DuckDuckGo proves a viable alternative. Photo / Getty Images
Opinion by Shira Ovide
The experiment showed it’s possible to switch from Google search to DuckDuckGo without significant issues.
DuckDuckGo offers similar features to Google but collects far less user data.
Individual choices can challenge Google’s dominance, but broader change requires more than just personal actions.
My experiment in ditching Google search felt like quitting coffee.
The first few days, I was jittery. I kept double searching on Google and DuckDuckGo, the non-Google web search engine I was using, to check if Google gave me better results. Sometimes it did. Mostly it didn’t.
More than twoweeks into a test of whether I love Google search or if it’s just a habit, I’ve stopped double checking. I don’t have Google fomo.
I confess that I haven’t (yet) quit Googling on all my devices. I’m definitely not ditching other company internet services like Google Maps, Google Photos and Gmail.
Google is the biggest internet search engine in the world.
I was surprised that Google search, the heart of the company’s empire, may be the easiest part of Google to ditch. But my experiment also showed the limits of our individual choices in knocking down Google’s illegal monopoly in search.
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The researchers concluded that because we rarely try alternatives to Google search, we have little experience to challenge our belief that Google search is superior. Giving another search option a shot could significantly dent, they said, the 90% of web searches we do with Google.
I’ve done more than 300 DuckDuckGo searches since then, including “beyonce ice bucket challenge” and “gestation period of a llama”. The first was for my job. The second one – I just got curious about llama pregnancy.
I didn’t do a fancy analysis into whether my search results were better with Google or DuckDuckGo, whose technology is partly powered by Bing. The researchers found our assessment of search quality is based on vibes. And the vibes with DuckDuckGo are perfectly fine.
Many dozens of readers told me about their own satisfaction with non-Google searches.
“Most people, as you’ve pointed out, just mindlessly go to Google,” Claire Lea of Tipp City, Ohio, wrote in an email. “I’ll mindlessly stick with Bing.”
The ease of leaving Google search is oddly good news for the company as it fights claims that it cheated to dominate. “Your experiment confirms what we’ve said all along – it’s easy to find and use the search engine of your choice,” a Google spokeswoman said.
For better or worse, DuckDuckGo is becoming a bit more Google-like.
DuckDuckGo and Bing also are mimicking Google’s makeover from a place that mostly pointed you to the best links online to one that never wants you to leave Google.
Search Google for “Warriors-Timberwolves” or “Is oatmeal gluten-free?” and you’ll probably see Thursday’s basketball score and Google’s AI-generated reply, respectively.
DuckDuckGo also shows you answers to things like sports results and gives AI-assisted replies, though less often than Google does. (You can turn off AI “instant answers” in DuckDuckGo.)
Answers at the top of search results pages can be handy – assuming they’re not wrong or scams – but they have potential trade-offs. If you stop your search without clicking to read a website about sports news or gluten intolerance, those sites could die. And the web gets worse.
DuckDuckGo says that people expect instant answers from search results, and it’s trying to balance those demands with keeping the web healthy. Google says AI answers help people feel more satisfied with their search results and web surfing.
DuckDuckGo has one clear advantage over Google: it collects far less of your data. DuckDuckGo doesn’t save what I search and wouldn’t know about my llama curiosity.
My biggest wariness from this search experiment is like the challenge of slowing climate change: your choices matter, but maybe not that much. Our technology has been steered by a handful of giant technology companies, and it’s difficult for individuals to alter that.
The judge in the company’s search monopoly case said Google broke the law by making it harder for you to use anything other than Google. Its search is so dominant that companies stopped trying hard to out-innovate and win you over. (AI could upend Google search. We’ll see.)
Even I have so far kept Googling on my home computer and Android phone. I and others have also found it tough to quit other parts of Google. You’ll have to pry YouTube out of my cold, dead hands. When I moved years of emails from Gmail to Proton Mail, that switch didn’t stick.
Despite those challenges, using Google a bit less and smaller alternatives more can make a difference. You don’t have to 100% quit Google.
