Google search engine is great. But if you’re the type that wants straight answers to every query without going through several blog posts, then you should consider AI-chat search engines.

Since Chat GPT became a sensation, many companies have increased research and funding to harness AI chatbots. AI search engines have a chat feature, which means you’ll get a straight answer for every search as if you’re chatting with a smart person.

Of all the companies with this feature, here are the three you should consider if you want to ditch Google.

1. Microsoft Copilot

Google has dominated the search engine world for decades, but Microsoft Copilot, with Chat-GPT's AI, now poses a real challenge. According to the announcement, Copilot AI now has a chat feature for better query response. This means it’ll give detailed answers to every query, and you can chat with it for follow-up questions.

Here's what it looks like:

I asked, "What does Jordan Peterson (a professor of psychology) think about happiness?" Copilot responded:

As a follow-up question, I asked, “What do people think about his point on happiness.” It says this:

In 2023, when I asked the same prompt, "What do people think about his opinion on happiness?" it responded with this.

It is evident that Copilot AI has undergone massive improvement, and this is a testament to how AI as a search engine has advanced remarkably.

There are other interesting features in Copilot, though. You can use it to track flights, predict the weather, and predict travel prices, and it integrates with the Microsoft 365 suite of apps.

You can also narrow your search to a particular location with Bing. This makes getting replies specific to your location easy, especially if they're as sensitive as "pharmacists near me" or "hotels nearby".

2. You.com

You.com is another search engine with AI chat capability. It answers queries like Chat GPT with relevant and straight-to-the-point answers. The way you'd love it.

Answers to queries look something like this:

Unlike Bing/Copilot AI, it provided a bit more context to its response.

While Copilot AI quoted Jordan with "happiness shouldn't be the primary goal of life", you.com was more specific.

For example, it cited how life is inherently tragic and everyone has the capacity for malevolence. you.com then explains how seeking long-term goals over the pursuit of happiness provides meaning to lives (over chasing after happiness). Copilot, on the other hand, summarizes in the last sentence without directly referencing Jordan's book.

While both chatbots are great, you.com takes it a little bit further with contextual details.

Here’s a follow-up question which seems to be much better than what Bing did:

Again, like Copilot AI, this response is much better than what I got in 2023 during this experiment:

The unique thing about you.com is you can customize your user experience with the search engine. First, you can tailor the responses you get.

For instance, you can select preferred sources for responses. You.com will provide responses from other sources but will prioritize your preferences where they're relevant to the query.

Plus, who doesn't like the idea of organized searches? With you.com, each search result pulls up multiple rows with tiles. These tiles contain essential quotes from the different blog posts, so you can select whichever best matches your query.

What's more? You can switch to private mode. In private mode, searches, preferences and locations aren't stored, and the queries you search for will come from You.com's IP address, not yours.

3. PerplexityAI

Perplexity AI is probably in the lead for AI chat search engines. It combines the functionalities of a traditional search engine and a conversational AI chatbot to provide concise, accurate answers to your queries.

It also provides reliable sources to enhance transparency and trustworthiness in the information provided.

Unlike Google or Microsoft browsers that primarily return links, Perplexity AI generates direct responses that sort of meet search intent better (using AI to analyze user queries).

When I asked it a similar question, here's what I got:

This is a more detailed answer compared to other AI search engines. It is probably why the co-founder and CEO, Aravind Srinivas, said this:

The follow-up question to Jordan Peterson's POV on happiness got this response:

I use Perplexity AI as an extension on my laptop, and it is incredibly easy to rely on. In the same way, I believe customer chatbots are easy to trust because they provide relevant information to users without the need to speak to a sales or customer support team.

Conclusion

You can set any of these search engine alternatives as your default browser by following simple steps. You can also create accounts with each of them to get full access.

The beautiful thing about these alternatives is that you have several options. If one AI search engine doesn't give you satisfactory answers, you can try alternatives until you get what you want.

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P.S. This article was first published on HackerNoon.