Inspired by a nascent hijack in this GQ thread (drewder used the neologism “binged” as a past participle for “searched for something on the internet using the Bing search engine”), I am inspired to ask what web search engine the SDMB community uses, and why.
Choices ranked by popularity per Top 15 Best Search Engines | April 2023. If you don’t see your preference, blame them. 
::::Checks date::::
This isn’t a zombie thread? Consider me surprised!
I’ll admit I didn’t search too long or deep to see if this poll has been done before, but it’s an interesting question. Even if it had been asked before, the search engine business has changed enough that a fresh look is work taking, I think.
The search engines in my home computer include Google, IMDB and DRAE (Spanish dictionary), but the last two are site-specific.
At first, this office didn’t have an “IT guy” (kind of funny, as we are an IT company). When we got one, he got lots of requests to “change my default browser to Chrome pretty please and the default search engine to Google : puppy eyes :”. People who joined after he did have already got those two setup.
There are OTHER search engines?
Archie followed by AltaVista!
An FTP search tool? I have literally not thought about that since last millennium. (Though is was definitely the shizzle before Marc Andreessen overthrew the Internet As We Knew It.)
Likewise, AltaVista, the best search engine EVAR, simply because you could construct searches with terrific precision. Rather than Google’s 90% successful natural language, which handles the mundane questions of the huddled masses just fine but completely attempts to correct me when I ask about anything slightly technical or exotic.
** sniffle **
I still miss Alta Vista Advanced Search.
I use Google, but Bing does have pretty screenshots, so sometimes. There are also some sites at work that can only be accessed thru Microsoft, because they have crappy web guys.
Your “IT” guy should be fired for putting spyware on everyone’s computer. Chrome should be on the naughty list on any managed network.
I use google. Once in a while, some other search engine manages to change the default on my browser, which so enrages me i swear I won’t even give them a try.
I will add, I don’t even recognize the name of about half of the poll options.
Google.
I always Change Firefox’s default search back to Google.
For ages I used one called Meta-something-or-other but the last ten years or more its been pretty much Google.
HUZZAH! to this
I am slowly transitioning from google to bing. Google is my default and homepage but I’m finding myself using bing more and more as it seems to me that google results are starting to slip in all areas. For example, I no longer use google maps for navigation or directions, VZNavigator does a better job with directions and can frequently find addresses google tells me don’t exist.
I too proudly use the term “binged” and bing-shui when googling and google-fu fail me.
It’s Google, all the way down.
There was also Veronica. For searching GOPHER sites!
Yahoo offers a form called Goodsearch, and it throws a little money to my favorite local charity for every search. I figger it’s done on the Yahoo platform, which in my experience is very similar to The Goog.
I used to use Yahoo. They also used to have wild-cards. If you didn’t remember Ammon Bundy’s name, you could search for A* Bundy. This doesn’t seem to be offered anywhere any more. Boo.
We already had Chrome, it just wasn’t the default browser.
But among our internal [del]websites[/del]apps, those which are picky about browsers (that is, almost all of them) have about a 90% probability of working best in Chrome (this includes our biweekly timesheets), 7% of doing well in Chrome or Firefox, and the rest are split between Firefox and IE.
If we’re going to fire everybody who’s on the devil’s side we can start with the CEO. There’s a few customers I’ll be happy to drive to Hell myself, make sure they get a specially cozy corner. What? The two I happen to hate also have the same situation: IE default, but stuff works best in Chrome.
I use Startpage / ixquick. It searches through Google but doesn’t track you. DuckDuckGo is my alternate choice.