Search without Google

The default search box on every European browser sends 90% of queries to Google. The other 10% mostly goes to Microsoft Bing. Both companies are American, both train AI on what you search for, both decide what counts as "the web".

One thing worth knowing first: most European "alternatives" still use Bing's index under the hood. Qwant, Ecosia, and swisscows pay Microsoft for search results and add a privacy layer on top. That's not nothing — your queries stop leaking to Google, the ad targeting goes away, the cookies get simpler. But Microsoft still sees the search.

Mojeek is the rare exception — a UK company crawling its own index since 2004. Smaller result set, genuinely European-owned. If "no American dependency" matters to you, that's the only honest pick on this page.

Below: six European search engines. None of them will beat Google for finding the right Stack Overflow answer. All of them let you search without a US company building a profile of what you wonder about.