OPINION

Why it's time to send out a search party with machetes

Vijay Verghese, Editor, Smart Travel Asia As Google search gets swamped by advertisers, it is time for travellers to explore alternatives that protect privacy, wipe user tracks, and actually serve up some useful results. You may be surprised. And the names are fun too.

by Vijay Verghese/ Editor

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The proliferation of new discrete, private, customised search engines and browsers means your dependence on the Google sponsored-ad swamp is over.

IT IS INTERESTING how online search — be it travel or simply figuring out how to change a baby’s diaper — has changed our lives. Despite the spam and pranksters, search results are gospel for many. Google is clearly the go-to platform. As one of the first search giants it attracted a huge following and rightly.

So what’s the problem? Simply put, search has taken over our lives and is changing how people view destinations, assess brands, and book travel. It has changed how we do business. And therein lies the rub.

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While Google is dominant and very good at what it does, it is also something of a snake-oil salesman. It has convinced people that everything goes through Google. If you’re not part of Google’s paid ecosystem you don’t exist. This an absurd proposition and one that has been challenged vigorously by a spate of new generation search engines and AI-assisted platforms.

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The basic assumption that Google lays down is that it offers the only possible route. If, say, you are headed from SOGO Causeway Bay Hong Kong to the Landmark mall Central, it assumes everyone would take the MTR (let’s call this Google). The MTR is certainly an efficient and weather-proof option but this fails to take into account that people loiter, browse, window-shop, walk, take trams, stop for lunch in random places, visit friends or run errands enroute, catch a bus, or hail a taxi to eventually get to Central.

{As Kagi says, “Everyone pays for search. The difference is whether you're paying with your attention, time, and private data — or with your wallet...”

Circuitous routes are what travellers often take. So, if you don’t pop up at the Central MTR right away, you are not counted by Google as a Landmark customer. This is the fundamental flaw in the proposition without even going into the issue of dubious sponsored placements that dominate results. A search for “best Phuket luxury resort” is packed with sponsored posts, advertisers, and online travel agents. There are perhaps two actual results on page one. “Most romantic hotels Bali” is much the same. Users have taken this for granted and the advertising creep has expanded. The problem for travellers was a lack of search choice. Well that’s all changed.

Several of the newer and experimental platforms are better suited to individual needs. Most maintain strict privacy and decorum. They will not hound you with advertising and sponsored links, and they do not dictate terms to users. It is time for travellers and search junkies to get acquainted with fun names like SwissCows, Kagi, and Duck Duck Go, some free, some subscription based.

The wonderfully minimalist SwissCows is moving to a ‘pro’ monthly plan at CHF3.50 (US$3.80) with a discounted annual rate. It is available as an app for smartphones. SwissCows is an anonymous family-friendly data-safe search engine that offers a VPN service, secure email and anonymous preview windows for a quick peek at sites without interrupting your search. As it says, “We have made it our mission to provide a safe space for internet users.” It lives up to its word. The search “best Phuket luxury resort’ pulls up no ads. It is simple, accurate and utterly private. Hurrah!

The Kagi search engine is a similar minimalist set-up with a 100 free searches trial and a US$5 Starter plan with 300 monthly searches. A ‘professional’ plan at US$10 a month comes with unlimited search and an ‘ultimate’ plan throws in AI. Kagi’s free trial search for “El Nido fun guide” pulls up a host of magazines, blogs and authentic sites. It also offers options to get more results from a particular page or to summarise content. On the El Nido query it did a good job of summarising our story as well.

Kagi seeks high quality content and it has a welcome ability to block domains or boost others. And it will alert you about trackers on sites you planh to visit. Kagi gets to the root of the free search issue thus: “Everyone pays for search. The difference is whether you're paying with your attention, time, and private data — or with your wallet.” It points to a projected US$261 billion estimated advertising spend by 2028 “to influence your search” — resulting in more clutter, more ads, tougher navigation, slower results and complete elimination of privacy.

Duck Duck Go was one of the first to challenge Google’s dominance as a free and private search browser with built in VPN, no tracking, no user profiling, complete obliteration of search data, and the serving of only non-targeted ads. Understandably popular with many in the financial community, it now handles over 3bn queries monthly. This puts it in the big league, albeit with smaller market share, along with Microsoft Bing, the Chinese Baidu, the workhorse Yahoo and the Russian Yandex. Its total privacy protection and raft of features along with its free service have made it increasingly desirable to many. When Duck Duck Go launched in 2008, many were amused. We were early adopters and are much the better for it.

As with Google the other bigger engines all collect data and target ads in varying degrees. But they may tend to throw up some alternative results. Look at the modestly refined Bing that is less of an advertising soup, Yahoo (which bombards users with news and pointless alerts), Chinese search giant Baidu, the tree-planting Ecosia (that is neat as an idea and in presentation, but with far too many sponsored results), and the well featured Yandex (with browser, email, weather, maps, games and translation).

Then there are the AI powered or assisted platforms like Google’s AI Gemini and Microsoft’s Copilot that function more like work assistants. Copilot gets quite chatty (Hey there hope you’re having a great day) which will amuse some and annoy others. But it is an endearing humanising feature. I said I was planning to view new hotels in Bali and it promptly served me a list drawn from a single web source, some of it off the mark. Chatty and quick but not really for search. Google’s Gemini will create images based on your imagination. It is pretty advanced but may not be available in several countries as yet.

Other AI assistants that can do more than decent search include the versatile and free CHATGPT (not universally available), You (powerful workplace assistant for research), Andi (chatty search), Komo (mind maps, aggregated perspectives and human-in-the-loop verification), ad-free Bagoodex (also offers follow-up queries to extend your search), the French Qwant (strong privacy, data protection and no user profiling), Brave, and Perplexity (useful for news and focused queries without clutter — “best Phuket luxury resort” threw up just a few interesting results, all of high quality).