For the people who have not yet decided on a search engine. The most EU way you can go is Ecosia or Qwant as they are building their own search index.
Ecosia is my personal pick as its also aimed at planting trees and they have quite a good browser alongside it.
Great! Ecosia works super well, and it feels good to not having to rely on google to find things. Only thing I’d wish for is that they’d have some map service or similar to find restaurants and shop. There is sadly no good replacement for google maps that I’ve found
i mean you kinda need to specify what you want from a map, there are a bunch of things that google maps is actively the worst at
For sure, one specific thing is being able to find a restaurant in the vicinity, seeing some kind of review system of its reception, and knowing if it’s open or not and having a link to a menu or its homepage. Another (albeit extremely specific) case is looking up a secondhand store in the vicinity of where I am - I tried this with here wego when I was out recently but it showed me a store that no longer existed. Of course might be a unlucky coincidence (google maps for sure has nonexisting stores too), but I’m 0 for 1 atm.
best alternative would probably be something like tripadvisor, for restaurants
obviously it’s not exactly a vastly less shitty option, but at least it’s not google.
Organic Maps
You could also use open street maps. For mobile I recommend using Organic Maps.l Only problem is, that the search isn’t that good.
Its already been mentioned but if you don’t need reviews you can use Here WeGo maps. Its a good alternative and with more users (who make fixes if something is missing) it’ll get better and better