I grew up using Google (and ask jeeves and yahoo.) In school, google won.<p>Now, google sucks. It's all ads, AI SEO maxxing, and the work to find useful results has gone up manyfold. I found myself using site:"" to get closer to what I needed.<p>I tried DDG, and it's more or less the same, but it's like the search engine is conspiring against you to more or less find completely useless results.<p>I tried kagi, and i love it. I hate that it's 100 searches for the cheapest account, but it gets me right into the thick of my research off the bat, plus searching smallweb has brought my faith back into the internet, and it's AI stuff is useful, insofar that it doesn't get in the way.<p>DDG is still my standard search tool for "picture of banana" or "WWII jet airplanes" but for "forum discussion 73 magazine article on homebrew superheterodyne receiver from 1980s" im going straight to kagi.