Google: That's why the search engine gets only the grade "satisfactory"
For Internet users, Google is usually the first place to go when it comes to content search. Stiftung Warentest has now tested ten search engines for various factors such as functionality and search settings - with an astonishing result. Google has to give way to another search engine and only lands in second place.
German users direct around 95 percent of their searches to Google - and with good reason. "Technically, Google is excellent: The search engine delivers the right results, offers a lot of comfort and practical additional functions," the Stiftung Warentest first stated in its results report. The reason for the rating "satisfactory" (2.7) lies elsewhere: The search engine giant has clear deficiencies in terms of privacy policy. Of the ten providers in the test only another search engine scored just as badly on this point.
Google is transferring unnecessary information and the declaration "is teeming with inadmissible clauses". The personalized advertising that Google uses by collecting user data via the search engine itself or other Google services should also be viewed critically.
Dutch search engine is the test winner
About the test victory "Startpage" may look forward. The company from the Netherlands scored the best with "good" (2.3) and, according to the test report, had no deficiencies in the privacy policy. It also offers apps with uncritical data delivery behavior. Behind them were Ecosia.org (2.8) and web.de (2.9). Several small search engine providers landed in the test on the front places. Three out of eight embed Google's search technology into their portal. Also "Startpage" uses the technology - however anonymized and sniff-free.
The exam included 50 different search queries per search engine, which should reflect the user situations in everyday life. The searched terms therefore contained spelling errors, ambiguities, paraphrases and unknown persons or contents. Some of the search queries were also checked against mobile. In the end, 300 search results per search engine were used for the evaluation.
