In my experience, the main-difference between Google and other search engines, aside from personalized results, is that Google tries very hard to interpret your query.
For example, if you search for some programming topic, it will generally pull results more towards the top, if they reference the current or a recent version of whatever programming language/tool you're searching for.
That helps, if you just want to type in "how do i do this? [programming language]" or similar.
In other search engines, you'll instead first search "how do i do this? [programming language]", then possibly not really get any good results and then instead search for "how do i do this? [programming language] [current version]".
This is how Google worked as well, some few years ago. Knowing what keywords to type in to get the right results was an actually valuable skill ("Google-fu"). Today's Google is instead designed to minimize the need for skill in phrasing your query. Great for the average user, but in my experience, if you do still possess Google-fu, then this interpretation actually hinders you.
With other search engines, you get the results that your query asked for. You know immediately when your query was ambiguous or just bad and can adjust accordingly. And with that, you can more easily narrow down the results, given that you know how to narrow down the results.
So, maybe give other search engines another try, while keeping that in mind. I personally very much prefer other search engines, because of that, even if I sometimes have to type one word more.
For example, if you search for some programming topic, it will generally pull results more towards the top, if they reference the current or a recent version of whatever programming language/tool you're searching for.
That helps, if you just want to type in "how do i do this? [programming language]" or similar.
In other search engines, you'll instead first search "how do i do this? [programming language]", then possibly not really get any good results and then instead search for "how do i do this? [programming language] [current version]".
This is how Google worked as well, some few years ago. Knowing what keywords to type in to get the right results was an actually valuable skill ("Google-fu"). Today's Google is instead designed to minimize the need for skill in phrasing your query. Great for the average user, but in my experience, if you do still possess Google-fu, then this interpretation actually hinders you.
With other search engines, you get the results that your query asked for. You know immediately when your query was ambiguous or just bad and can adjust accordingly. And with that, you can more easily narrow down the results, given that you know how to narrow down the results.
So, maybe give other search engines another try, while keeping that in mind. I personally very much prefer other search engines, because of that, even if I sometimes have to type one word more.