DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo (DDG) has become my favourite search engine. The primary reason I switched was because it isn't a Google nor other big tech jerk thing, and that it doesn't do any tracking or data hoarding. But of course as time moved on it's started doing tracking and showing ads., so I'm looking for alternatives again

There are pleanty of other neat things too: The search results are good, you can easily use it to search Open Street Map, the bang searches and other handy shortcuts like easy currency conversion, maths, etc.

One of the features I use the most in DDG are the bangs. These are shortcuts you can use to search a lot of different websites (see: duckduckgo.com/bang).

To use you just type an exclamation mark followed by the abbreviation, then a space, then your search term.

Here're the ones I use most often:

※ With a little setup work, you can get similar functionality by using keywords in Firefox.
※ There are now Firefox addons that have the same functionality without phoning home to DDG: !bang, Bang, Duckduck Bang!.

DDG promotes itself as privacy friendly, but it still uses tracking in the form of collecting data at improving.duckduckgo.com. The search results are just Bing, and the default map isn't open street map. And it's browser has a deal with Microsft so it includes their trackers.

• https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/duckduckgo.html
• https://help.duckduckgo.com/privacy/atb/
• https://old.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/i8fg3y/why_is_duckduckgo_sending_data_to/
• https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/duckduckgo-browser-allows-microsoft-trackers-due-to-search-agreement/

• FrogFind - DDG wrapper so it'll work nice on old computers.