[abraxasz]

Just one data point here, but I effectively switched to Bing for search (actually, DDG, but they use Bing among other things to get their results). In all honesty, I think that google's results are slightly better, especially when it comes to technical type of searches (maths, statistics, academic papers, etc..), but for the most common types of searches, DDG does just fine. Reasons for the switch? I was getting a bit upset by all these privacy things, and the NSA stuff got me over the edge 4 or 5 months ago. Not that my new setup is anymore secure, but I think that DDG does an honest effort to not actively screw me over, which is more than can be said of the other tech cos so I'm willing to encourage that type of behavior by giving them a shot.

[a3n]

The nice thing about DDG is that it's extremely easy to use the DDG browser interface to search google if you decide to do so.

In Firefox, if you have DDG as your default search:

  ctrl-k (next thing you type will be a search)
  !g     (A DDG "bang code," in this case "search google")
   whatever (this search will be sent to google)

<ctrl-k>!g whatever, and you're sent to a google search result page. Bonus, you get a better results page URL than google usually gives you.

DDG gets better and better every day. I noticed recently that if you search for a street address DDG gives you a map result from open street map, and gives you links to bing, mapquest, google maps and open street map. It's great.

And btw the DDG bang code for google maps is "!gm" and the bang code for google news is "!gn".