I’m still trying to de-Google my life, little by little. I don’t trust Bing for similar reasons. DDG is feeling shady of late. What’s the search engine you all recommend that I can inject into my daily life? Is there perhaps a search engine that is focused on code, or have we just all moved on to AI for searching?
Edit: I meant to also express my frustration that most browsers do not let you select a “default search engine” that can be used in the address bar aside from 3-5 pre-chosen engines. Seems like 2023 we should be able to customize that to our own liking.
I’m out of the loop on DDG, what did they do?
So iirc, they were caught suppressing/promoting results to push the Russian narrative at the beginning of the war in Ukraine. I’m not sure if anything else has come up since then though, and I’ve continued using DDG, just not for any sort of news or information on current events. I mainly use a search engine for dev stuff anyways.
It’s actually the opposite. The downranked sites they considered Russian propaganda which made a lot free speech enthusiasts mad.
https://slate.com/technology/2022/03/duckduckgo-russian-disinformation-downranking.html
Do you have a source for that?
Not sure on the shady part, but I have stopped using them simply because they give me the same crap as Bing. Web search is almost dead, I’ve been thinking of trying one of the paid options. I’ve read good things about kagi
Started selling browsing data to Microsoft, apparently
Does anyone have a source?
Probably not, because it’s a lie.
I’ve been using DDG, and Ecosia. So I looked to see what was up with DDG. From what I’m reading, I’ll keep using DDG.
May 25, 2022 An article in TechRadar, and another on The Register mention an inability to block Microsoft trackers on DDG.
https://www.techradar.com/news/duckduckgo-in-hot-water-over-hidden-tracking-agreement-with-microsoft
https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/25/duckduckgo_browser_microsoft_privacy/August 5, 2022 A TEchCRunch article describes DDG’s efforts to block advertising requests and other tracking protections
https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/05/duckduckgo-microsoft-tracking-scripts/May 12, 2023 Reuters article “No deal between DuckDuckGo and Microsoft to track users online”
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL1N3792HE/
“Independent experts say that DuckDuckGo blocks known tracking scripts from loading to prevent vulnerable personal identifiers from being exposed, including Microsoft-owned scripts. A separate partnership with Microsoft for advertising on DuckDuckGo’s search results page is limited to ad placements, not tracking users or building profiles, a DuckDuckGo spokesperson said.”Further, "Users sharing the headline, “Google Lite: DuckDuckGo Signs Secret Deal with Bill Gates to Track Users Online” in April 2023 can be seen (here) and (here).
The headline belonged to a story that first appeared on NewsPunch on May 25, 2022 (here), which now redirects to The People’s Voice (the two are affiliated) (here) (here).
The original article was published before DuckDuckGo eliminated, in August 2022, an exception that did permit some Microsoft-owned tracking scripts on websites to send data to Microsoft."
Links are in the article cited.
The only thing I can find is they allow MS trackers in their browser. Which isn’t great, but doesn’t matter if you only use their search.
Do you have a source?
Nope. That’s why I said apparently, lol
That’s kind of spreading misinformation though right?
Someone asked what was up with ddg, and I responded with the issues I have observed being discussed. Whether or not it is true is of no concern to me, because that isn’t how I understood the question.
I just make a post in NoStupidQuestions and use y’all like a search engine. :P
Posting a wrong answer is a good way to get the right answer in a reply!
Ah, Murphy’s law
You’re thinking of Godwin’s Law
Got 'em
Almost got me!
https://kagi.com no ads, great results. It’s $5 a month but worth it imo
Seconding. Kagi is the only one that was able to replace Google for me.
It’s really good. The price tag is worth it imo as they buy results from a host of other search engines including Google, but the results are actually better.
This is the only true Google replacement I’ve found.
DuckDuckGo on Firefox. If you truly want to de-google your life avoid Chrome and Chromium based browsers like Edge and Brave
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But it doesn’t track you. So, better Privacy
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How so? It existed before bing.
It used to be Google search without the extras.
Firefox allowed you to define the default search and have many many engines listed. That’s been a standard feature for many years.
even simpler – Firefox will auto-detect a lot of search engines – right-click in the search/address bar and if Firefox can detect it, bottom option will be to add that engine to your list
I’m pretty sure most browsers can. Pretty sure OP’s complaint’s a big misplaced on that one.
All of them do allow it, but not all of them make it simple. There are times it will change the search in the address bar but not everywhere else in the browser as well. Of the web browsers I use, Firefox is the most friendly to change.
Half a dozen people in here already mentioned it, but Kagi has completely changed the search game and changed the way I use the Internet. It’s like an old school search engine with modern conveniences like a chat bot and summarizer, but without the ads and other shenanigans.
Ugh, paid. In this economy!?
I know, that was my reaction at first too. But I tried it for a month and honestly it’s an amazing search engine. If it helps you to know, when you search they also use the (paid) search APIs of other search engines and aggregate the results in a way to get something better than any individual engine - so your searches actually have a decent marginal cost for them.
$5/month. Worth it.
Even better if you can get into a family plan with friends
except it’s not for me… I search way, way more than 300/month and $10/m honestly sounds a little unreasonable for a search engine.
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Kagi is by far the best search engine I’ve ever used. It is paid though.
I’ve been paying for it for a couple of months now, am pretty happy with it. Feels weird to be paying for a search engine, and as it still only has a finite number of searches every month I still have to get used to not being reluctant to use it, but its results are indeed great. More focused than DuckDuckGo, less bullshit than Google.
Are you sure? I had been paying for a higher tier, but I remember they sent an email that they were changing or removing the search metering a while ago.In US it’s $5 for 300 searches or $10 for unlimited.
Unless they changed something very subtly and very recently, there’s a cap on searches on the lower tier and unlimited search on the higher one.
You’re right. It’s $5 for 300 searches or $10 for unlimited. It used to cost more and still have a limit. I didn’t realize there was still a cheaper tier.
I’ve been incredibly happy with Kagi. All of the listicles and blogspam get shunted off into their own sections. Kagi also seems to do a pretty good job at finding “deep” results. Like, when I want to find out more information about some home automation gizmo, Kagi does a good job of finding some random blog post where someone has torn the gizmo apart and analyzed every strength and weakness it has. I still prefer Google for looking up restaurants and stuff, but I hardly use it anymore. I don’t at all regret the $10 a month I pay to use Kagi.
Edit: I also like that Kagi lets you define rules. Occasionally I’ll be forced to go to Reddit to get some information (I really try to go elsewhere first). I deleted my account, so I go to new Reddit by default (which I hate). I don’t want to add an extension to redirect to old Reddit, but I can just replace the
wwwwitholdautomagically for all Reddit search results. Works great.The best I’ve found is Mojeek. The results take some getting used to because we’re all used to Google’s fuckery, but I’ve been using it for months, and it’s quite good.
There’s also SearXNG, though I’m not sure if that fits your needs. A couple public instances I’ve liked are:
Random SearX Redirector – basically just that, sends your search to a random working SearXNG instance
This is super rad! I’ve never heard of this, so thanks for sharing.
I really enjoy Mojeek. It gives you results you would not get anywhere else. I see high value in that
Yeah, it reminds me of the old search engines in the 90s. I’ve come to love it.
Thanks for the shoutout, it’s always much-appreciated. If you’re looking to test new things/ help us out in other ways, we’re testing a new algo :D
Nice, I’ll try it out, thanks!
Coming back half a year later to see this comment. Thank you for thank link. I would love to help out!
It’s not currently got something live on it to test (you can use it but it should be the same results across both). If you wanna help out then let us know how you find Mojeek via this survey please!!! https://blocksurvey.io/mojeek-user-survey-2024-mJmJ2bBcQDy9QtByOmJX7A?v=o
I use SearXNG. It is a meta search engine so it use results from various other search engines and you can specify which with
!. It does the job for me.My favourite feature is that you can host it yourself, you can even set it up to search over tor or VPN if you’re super privacy conscious.
I was a bit wary when I first spun up an instance, but it’s very low maintenance and mostly just works.
Does it choke in some edge cases? Yeah, but far less often than I had expected. For my own use case it’s low resource and does exactly what it says on the tin - nothing more, nothing less.
It’s my default across a variety of devices, and is perfectly happy behind basic auth and a minimal nginx conf.
Occasionally I’ve even surfaced some oddball results that give me unexpected perspective on a topic.
Duckduckgo if you use a vpn, everyone else throws speedbumos at VPN users… Prove your a human…
Been using Qwant for maybe a year or so. Recently found Swisscows too. I am not sure if Qwant uses their own index. I remember that they said that they were to create their own index, but the results looks suspiciously similar to Bing. Swisscows for sure runs their own index, and I find the results to be rather good
Edit: I meant to also express my frustration that most browsers do not let you select a “default search engine” that can be used in the address bar aside from 3-5 pre-chosen engines. Seems like 2023 we should be able to customize that to our own liking.
Which browsers don’t? I think this one can likely be chalked up to user error.
