Google’s privacy issues are fairly well-known—there is even a Wikipedia page about it. Even if we don’t know the details, we are all somewhat aware of the fact that Google is tracking our lives across the internet and selling that data. Googlehas other problems as well—I increasingly hear from friends that they believe it is under-performing as a search engine, though I haven’t faced any particular difficulties myself. That said, I do feel the effect of advertising. Search results are often buried beneath advertisements, and this damages the overall experience. More than a few times I have clicked on an advert transporting me to some completely irrelevant (and occasionally dubious-looking) websites. I also don’t enjoy the new Google AI searches and the way in which they force their way (against my own will or desire) to the top of most searches. Often times these AI searches are incorrect, poorly referenced, or don’t prove very useful for a user.

There are many alternatives to Google, but a lot of us fear that we might lose something in using other services. At *The Digital Orientalist,*we see an increasing number of visitors coming through Bing, DuckDuckGo, and chat bots. From my experience in the classroom and talking to other researchers, I know that an increasing number of people are using chat bots instead of Google—though I would personally like to urge caution here since large language models are not search engines in the traditional sense. Given all these issues, I wanted to see if I could conduct my research using an alternative search engine—specifically *DuckDuckGo.*In this article, I show that there is very little difference between conducting research with DuckDuckGoor with Googleas our primary search engine. In addition, I point to some wider concerns that users may have when changing their search engine.

As part of the *Christian-Muslim Relations: 1500–1900*project, I am writing a piece about the missionary John Wilson (1804–1875) that will be published in the *Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History*series. Entries in the series consist of a biography of the person in question and a descriptive bibliography on the texts—relevant to Christian-Muslim relations—that they composed.

I have written numerous chapters and entries for the series across multiple volumes. When I am writing, there are a number of resources that I usually turn to. One is the Wikipediapage on a person, where I identify some potential sources on their life. This might then lead me to conduct a search for a digital copy of those texts elsewhere online or within a library catalogue. I usually turn to CiNii, a particularly good resource for finding articles and books in Japan or the catalogues of the universities where I have access rights. I also search the *Dictionary of National Biography,*which as a public domain text is available in various forms online and its updated version—the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography—which is available online if one belongs to a subscribing institution. I also always search the Internet Archivefor relevant sources and *Google Books.*Amongst all of these locations it is only Google Booksthat requires a Googlesearch—all other searches are performed directly on the individual websites. The question now is whether abandoning Googlewould negatively impact my writing of Wilson’s biography.

I ended up using five sources to write Wilson’s biography. Several were found through Wilson’s Wikipediapage and all were accessed through the Internet Archive except the entry from the *Dictionary of National Biography ,*which I found on *WikiSource.*Searching for “John Wilson missionary biography” on either Googleor DuckDuckGo allows me to locate the same basic resources. One difference lies in the results pages. On the first page of results, both search engines link to Wilson’s Wikipediapage, the Dictionary of National Biography, the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography(for a different John Wilson), and Electric Scotland. DuckDuckGoincludes a link to DBPedia, which features a list of external links to texts about Wilson on the Internet Archivethat would prove highly useful for writing a biography. It also has links to the Gazetteer of Scotland, Prabook(for a different John Wilson), *The Checkup, WikiWand,*and WikiTree, which are less useful.

Google instead**features a link to Amazon for George Smith’s biography of Wilson, an archival catalogue from JISC including information on collections related to Wilson at Edinburgh University Library, a broken link for a PDF from a website titled MyBMC, the Encyclopedia of Seventh-Day Adventists (for a different John Wilson), and a link to the PDF of Smith’s biography from the Internet Archive. In this case, there are no dramatic differences between Googleand DuckDuckGo, since both allow us to discover the same resources. For example, if one didn’t know about the existence of Smith’s biography (or Internet Archive for that matter) one would find it in the results of either search—through Wikipediaon both platforms*,*through a direct link to Smith’s biography in Google’s results, or through DBPediain DuckDuckGo’s results. I did find it interesting that Google included a broken link, and it is potentially noteworthy that Google provides two links to the same resource (Smith’s biography)—one free and one behind a paywall.

Google Search for John Wilson.

For my descriptive bibliography of Wilson’s work, I was advised to look at several texts including information pertinent to Christian-Muslim relations. These were his Refutation of Muhammadism(1830s and 1840s), A Memoir of Margaret Wilson(1844), The Lands of the Bible Visited and Described(1847), and Star of Bethlehem and the Magi from the East(1856).

The first task is to locate all of these texts preferably in digital form. I will explore Wilson’s Refutationlater. For the other three texts, Googleprovides links first to Amazonand then to digitized versions on* Google Books*, followed by versions found in other repositories. The search for The Lands of the Bibleincluded a Google AI overview as its first result. This didn’t tell me anything that I couldn’t grasp from looking at the text and its front matter, and therefore served more as a visual barrier to more useful search results than a tool for research. DuckDuckGooffered the Internet Archiveversion of the texts first. Amazonlinks were usually included, but could feature at different positions in the results amongst links to other scans including Google Books. In the case of The Lands of the Bible, DuckDuckGo did offer the chance to try using its AI Assisttool. Like *Google,*it didn’t offer particularly useful insights, though the links to references were much clearer and (if I had chosen to do so) easier to navigate to.

DuckDuckGo’s results for a search for “The Lands of the Bible.”

Wilson’s Refutation to Muhammadismis a different story. I had been given some bibliographical information and secondary sources, but was struggling to find useful sources. The series’ editors recommended descriptions in Smith’s biography and John Murdoch’s Catalogue of the Christian Vernacular Literature of India(1870), both of which were available on the Internet Archive. They also recommended descriptions in Nile Green’s Bombay Islam(2011). Both search engines allowed me to easily find versions of the text at auction, but weren’t particularly useful for locating other sources with new information. Smith’s biography referred to the text by the title Refutation of Muhammadanism, but a search for this title also failed to produce useful results. The key difference between the search engines emerged in relation to Green’s text. Google Booksprovided a preview of Green’s text which allowed me to view the relevant pages of the text, whilst DuckDuckGodoes not. (In this case, this is somewhat of a moot point since I am able to access Green’s text electronically and physically through the institutional libraries that I have access to.) DuckDuckGoalso pointed me to versions of the text available on Internet Archive(Googledid not)—usually I would miss digitized versions of modern texts on the platform since I tend to use it onlyfor older publications. Had I used another research example for this article, it is possible that Google Bookswould be the only source available to access a text online.

Here we get to the crux of the problem—transferring to another search engine means that we lose access to certain Google-specific services.[1] Most of these are easily replaceable. I’ve never found much of a use for Google Scholar, since papers are usually much easier to find on other platforms and repositories. Many of us already favour DeepL over Google Translatefor machine translation, though the latter offers a greater number of languages. The main loss is Google Books. Of course, there are many alternatives for finding or accessing texts digital or analogue, but the text search functionality of Google Books is particularly powerful for locating relevant information in a text quickly. Some scholars may therefore be reluctant to completely transfer to another search engine, and decide to transfer partially. For example, one can use Google Bookswhen necessary and adopt another search engine for other purposes. Another issue in the way of chaining search engine is that Googleis easy. Since it is the default search engine in many browsers, it takes conscious effort to move elsewhere and change the settings in your browser.

My own experimentation with DuckDuckGoextend beyond the example I used in this article. Something I have learnt is that although one loses access to Google Books, one is able to access much of the same information. In some cases, as illustrated here DuckDuckGoprovides new potentially useful information that doesn’t appear in a Googlesearch—the link to DBPediaand the Internet Archive’sversions of Green’s Bombay Islam, for example. I want to assert, therefore, that alternative search engines can be useful for research. As such, I highly recommend that those concerned about internet privacy or other issues with Google experiment with other search engines. There is much less to lose than you may think, and you can always use the Google services that you find useful, whilst using another search engine for other purposes.

Notes

[1] Here I am ignoring software and apps such as Google Mail, *Drive, Docs,*and Formsthough there are likely good alternatives for them.

Cover Image: “MacBook Pro Touchbar JIS keyboard” by ijclark licensed under CC BY 2.0.