I don't really care if it's unbiased, because its search functions suck. Put a minus sign before a term and it will just give you pages that have less of that term. When I say I don't want results that include a certain term, I mean what I say. That's just one example. Google still lets me run searches the way I define them, and that neutralizes a lot of their default bias. If you're lazy and just type a word or name in the search box and hit enter, I figure you deserve whatever junk results you get.
Pro tip: About 3 years ago, Google started fuzzing the results on search terms inside quote marks ("term" or "these terms"). But you can still get results limited to exact matches by using the intext: syntax ( intext:term or intext:"these terms"). If you don't have a Google account (I don't) or aren't logged in, using this syntax repeatedly will usually trigger a prove-you're-not-a-bot test, where you have to click all the pictures that contain a car or some such nonsense. It's a bit annoying, but since I don't have any kind of Google account and I'm an extremely heavy user of their absolutely free service, I suck it up and play their stupid picture games. It's a rare day when I don't run at least a couple hundred searches, counting refinements of the same search effort.
I'd be more than happy to drop a penny in a payment jar for every time I hit enter on a new or revised search string, if there was a way to do that without having an account. I really think that kind of revenue system needs to be the wave of the cyberfuture, but first somebody needs to develop the technology to use something like that without any tracking.
The thing that pisses me off the most about google is their biased algorithm bleeds beyond politics. A couple of years ago if I was trying to find an answer for a computer problem. If you typed the problem in correctly you would get a good answer that almost always worked. Now doing the same thing you get sent to the product website. Say the problem is with Adobe, now it sends your to adobe and the problem listed might not even be the one your are asking about. It used to just match the question and give the best answer.
I don't really care if it's unbiased, because its search functions suck. Put a minus sign before a term and it will just give you pages that have less of that term. When I say I don't want results that include a certain term, I mean what I say. That's just one example. Google still lets me run searches the way I define them, and that neutralizes a lot of their default bias. If you're lazy and just type a word or name in the search box and hit enter, I figure you deserve whatever junk results you get.
Pro tip: About 3 years ago, Google started fuzzing the results on search terms inside quote marks ("term" or "these terms"). But you can still get results limited to exact matches by using the intext: syntax ( intext:term or intext:"these terms"). If you don't have a Google account (I don't) or aren't logged in, using this syntax repeatedly will usually trigger a prove-you're-not-a-bot test, where you have to click all the pictures that contain a car or some such nonsense. It's a bit annoying, but since I don't have any kind of Google account and I'm an extremely heavy user of their absolutely free service, I suck it up and play their stupid picture games. It's a rare day when I don't run at least a couple hundred searches, counting refinements of the same search effort.
I'd be more than happy to drop a penny in a payment jar for every time I hit enter on a new or revised search string, if there was a way to do that without having an account. I really think that kind of revenue system needs to be the wave of the cyberfuture, but first somebody needs to develop the technology to use something like that without any tracking.
The thing that pisses me off the most about google is their biased algorithm bleeds beyond politics. A couple of years ago if I was trying to find an answer for a computer problem. If you typed the problem in correctly you would get a good answer that almost always worked. Now doing the same thing you get sent to the product website. Say the problem is with Adobe, now it sends your to adobe and the problem listed might not even be the one your are asking about. It used to just match the question and give the best answer.
Easy fix. Just add -site:adobe.com to your search string.
Google works beautifully if you choose to exercise control over it. Lazy searchers will get whatever Google wants them to get.
Edit to add: I just tried that on DuckDuckGo and it works there too. DuckDuckGo is improving, but always seems to be significantly behind Google.