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The alternatives are bad because the ones that were even remotely good were bought and killed by Google over the years. This includes ones we all have heard of as well as countless others.

This is a common tactic of tech giants, and the direct consequence of it is… what we have today.

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Google has acquired a lot of ad competitors, but I can't remember any general-purpose search engines. It seemed more like they died out naturally over a long period. I welcome new information if that's not right.

They definitely bought and killed DejaNews.

Edit: Per Wiki, Google has also bought and killed the following search engines/services that nobody has heard of: Outride, Kaltix, Plink, Like.com, Orion, Metaweb, Awkan Technologies.

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