Search engine. Browser. If you use a computer, you’ve probably heard both terms. Although there’s a difference, it never really mattered to me as long as I could find what I was looking for. But when I was asked if I knew the difference, I had to shrug. I knew Chrome is a browser and that’s what I use for seemingly everything.
Would it help clarify if I said Google, Bing, Yahoo Search, and DuckDuckGo are search engines and Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and Opera are browsers?
I didn’t think so.
Or maybe NordVPN’s explanation will clarify. (I won’t make you read it here.)
Even after reading the definitions, I’m not sure I can explain the difference, but it’s said a picture is worth a thousand words, so allow me to demonstrate. Let’s say I’m shopping for a “king size coverlet or quilt watercolor blue.”
I type that into the Chrome search bar and get this:
That’s a start even if, like me, you don’t appreciate all the sponsored listings that always appear first. But if you go to Kagi, a search engine, and run the same search, you’ll get this:
Now that’s helpful!
I still can’t adequately explain the search engine/browser difference, but obviously there is one, particularly if you’re shopping for blue coverlets.
I’ve not explored Kagi beyond a few brief shopping searches. It gives you a number of free searches (100, I think) before a monthly fee ($5 for 300 searches) is required. Said fee is not charged in those months when you do no searches.
After decades of using browsers, I rarely think to use a search engine, although Kagi strikes me as more helpful than some of the others. Maybe this post will be the reminder I need to try it more often. Certainly it would have made my recent shopping spree easier.
(On the other hand, maybe that’s a good reason to avoid Kagi … )
And just to be more confusing, some browsers, like chrome, integrate a search engine into the address bar so when you start typing a web address, it does a search engine search to auto complete the web address you’re trying to type in.
I think I’d rather have a library with an old fashioned card index.
Well, that explains some of my confusion. My browser of choice for many years has been Chrome. Then as I was writing this, I thought I’d try finding and using the Google search engine …
You open an interesting can of, something, here. A quick search on Google, which is default browser on Apple devices, says (courtesy of “AI”), that Google Chrome is the dominant browser with 65% marker share. I think that’s because Google was first to provide search engine service. Clearly, there is competition. AI says Chrome is best for speed and features but Firefox is best for privacy and security.
When I go to the government website “MyPay”, I get a popup warning that my Safari is not approved, but when I continue, it works just fine. So far.
I never heard of Kagi before, but why would anyone pay for this when apparently superior service is free? Bottom line, I tend skeptical of search engines. Google AI told me that DFAS accepts Edge and Safari, but DFAS itself says not. I think we are still in the Wild West of browserdom.
In addition to Chrome, I also use Firefox and Safari on occasion when I want to check how a new blog page or element will appear on a browser other than Chrome, or if I want to get around a paywall somewhere that’s limiting my number of articles per month. My son, an IT developer, showed me Kagi. I doubt he was impressed only with its shopping potential, but I couldn’t tell you now what it was (and am not sure I’d have understood it anyway). I’m reasonably sure I’ll never hit 100 searches a month, so not concerned about the subscription thing.
Safari should be fine. It’s the default browser for Mac computers, which I happen to have. I was too lazy to make the switch from Chrome.
You just had to go and mention AI. It’s got great potential but currently so many shortcomings. I’m really leery.
This is my realm! I work in IT, mostly user support at a small college. After 26 years at it, I’m still surprised when a user doesn’t have a clear concept of what a browser is. It’s like air, you just don’t notice it, though its absence is quite palpable.
A browser is nothing more than an application (program) that makes a website visible, once given the web address, manually or by clicking a link (URL). Search engines are seamlessly integrated into today’s browsers, but in the past, they were just other websites with boxes into which one could enter the text of search terms. Search terms guide an algorithmic crawl over some database of internet content, yielding more links containing those words. The genius of Google’s algorithm, in the late 1990s, somehow found pages and sites closer to what users wanted, as opposed to a daunting pile of URLs with the search words, yes, but of no interest otherwise.
This explanation requires minimal understanding what is an application, or app. An app is like the verb in a sentence. It conveys action. Pretty useless without some nouns or adjectives. Microsoft Word is an application that allows the creation and saving of documents containing mostly words. Many applications allow users to produce documents to be saved, or conversely, to be opened and read or edited.
The documents of the internet are web pages, collected into websites, all linked up by so called hypertext. Web browsers navigate and open those documents, handling all kinds of file types in the process to present you with a readable image on your screen. Words, images, sounds, buttons to click on, etc.
There are many browsers to choose from, and I always advise users to have more than one on their computers. Apple computers come with Safari included, but downloading and installing Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or Brave, is a great idea. Safari, like Firefox, has more security built in, which can sometimes cause a website not to render properly.
Sorry, I couldn’t stop myself.
LOL. Hi David! Good to see you’re still out there and still reading my stuff. On some level, at some point, I probably had a reasonably good grasp of all this stuff. But technology outpaced me a long time ago. As long as I can find what I’m looking for, I’m content. I used Brave for a while, but I’ve long since forgotten why it looked like a good idea (security?), which computer I was using at the time, and why I quit using it.
(You should see my browser bookmarks after transferring and continually adding to the list through several different browsers and computers over umpteen years!)
Thanks, David, for that lucid explanation. After posting my comment I wished I had added something about browsers being different from search engines but I guess I didn’t because, like PT, they work so seamlessly together they seem like the same thing. I wonder, do you have an opinion you’d like to share about the trustworthiness of AI?
Just to really confuse the issue, Colorado, Duckduckgo is both a browser AND a search engine. [grin] Ah noo that’d make you happy !
But one could say that without a browser one cannot access a search engine – so the browser is the chicken and the searc— oh bugger ! Forget that last bit. 🙂
Apparently there’s a lot of that browser/search engine combo stuff in existence. And now they’re all adding AI as well. And you know how I feel about AI.
(And BTW, science has decided the egg came first.)
And I missed it when they did !!! [wanders off disconsolately]
Don’t feel bad. I only heard about it a couple of years ago, and quite by accident.
I just knew I came back here for a good reason!
🙂