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.
Edit 2: Thanks for the recommendation of Kagi. I’m going to roll with it for a while. I see they have an extension for Safari that allows them to hijack the address bar, which is just what I needed.
I run a whoogle instance personally
How is an instance a search engine?
Whoogle is a self hosted front end for google. You just run it and it will pass the search to Google and strip all the bullshit out.
Thanks for the info!
Of what?
Of shit auto correct, whoogle, open source privacy frontend for google
Brave search is also really good now
brave is pretty widely disliked by people (including me) for it’s CEO’s homophobia. That’s probably why you’re being down voted.
Brave statement
Ican only speak of my own experience. Finding what I’m looking for and not having to deal with the insane amount of ads on google and the likes is worth it to me to make a recommendation.
People aren’t downgotinf because you’re right or wrong, but because Brave is homophobic.
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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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How so? It existed before bing.
It used to be Google search without the extras.
They have changed the way they gather results since they first launched.
Ok so it’s a bing proxy basically?
DDG uses Bing for 100% of its results.
Interesting, when DDG fails to give me anything worth while, I go to Bing and usually get what I’m looking for.
People use bing? I find the results just like a dogs breakfast. Such a mess.
I use bing more and more. It’s not fantastic but feels like it’s on track to be ome better than google.
But it doesn’t track you. So, better Privacy
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ublock origin says otherwise
SearXNG
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+1 for DDG, but i dont get it why some comments here said it is just bing
Because DDG uses Bing’s API. Basically, you submit a search to DDG, DDG submits that search to Bing, Bing provides results to DDG who repackages them as DDG, then provides that to you.
Which is great, privacy-wise, but results-wise it is just Bing. DDG is what I use, but that’s all it is
Kagi is the best around if you are willing to pay. If I had to cancel my subscription for whatever reason, I would go back to DDG.
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Do you like to swim in your cash vault like Scrooge McDuck?
Kagi really isn’t that pricy.
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.
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Sorry it didn’t work for you…
Ugh, paid. In this economy!?
It’s either your wallet or your personal information…
A surprisingly and insanely expensive to run and manage a search engine that isn’t just a reskin on bing (DDG). Even more so when you can’t mine your users for data.
Kagei is doing really good stuff and the quality of results I get are much higher. The $10/m is it easily paid off within even a day or two’s use in my normal job. Never mind all the personal research that I do.
Is a different model that is a not providing you with the best results that you are looking for. As opposed to steering you towards ads or towards partnerships. I like it.
I totally get the sentiment of saying when you pay you are not the product, however… what does any company stop from still collecting data anyway? I know that the kagi people deny that but why should anyone trust that.
Companies have fucked customers/consumers over so much, there is no trusting anyone when it comes to data collection. It is just so easy. Even if they don’t use it right now, why not just collect it anyway.
So, while I’d love to pay a little bit to support a service like that, I am so jaded by how dishonest companies have been about stuff like that, that I am not really willing to also give them money in addition.
This pretty much matches my sentiment. These days, you’re always the product. If you get something for free, you’re the product. If you pay for something, you’re also the product. Companies have decided that data is simply too valuable to give up.
Also, if I give your company payment information, don’t you just have even more data on me now?
$5/month. Worth it.
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.
Cool, don’t use it then. Enjoy your SEO optimised search results
For the huge majority of people, $5 and 300 searches is plenty, and great value for actually useful results
For that price I can just spool up a vps and run a Searxng instance.
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Even better if you can get into a family plan with friends
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.
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I’m out of the loop on DDG, what did they do?
[Edited by the commenter to remove incorrect information, see below.] 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
I think rather than either or, it just ranks things differently and doesn’t give the best results.
I also remember during the height of COVID, antivax people were saying to use DDG because their random blogs and conspiracy YouTube videos were closer to the top compared to google.
Do you have a source for that?
Apart from that, the results are often pretty terrible unless you use the exact terms from whatever page you’re trying to find. I’ve also seen a lot of people stating that search results keep changing every time they refresh the page as well.
I’m still using it but it was fun when they had something along the lines of “your privacy is safe with us. Also, wanna leave your email?” 😅
I am thinking of migrating to Kagi now, because search in DDG is often meh
A long ago they had drama for apparently leaking user information to microsoft— but that was a while ago. Really they were accused of having biased results.
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Does anyone have a source?
Probably not, because it’s a lie.
Where does that page state that their claim isn’t true? All it states is “We don’t track you” but it doesn’t say that they don’t allow other companies to track you instead.
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?
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That’s kind of spreading misinformation though right?
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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
i don’t get this, i get perfectly fine search results with ddg…
i get finding the results slightly worse but dead? stop it with this absurd hyperbole
Free web search gives me a whole page of SEO pages, cached reddit content that’s been deleted when you click it, or one of like five tech giants and their crap.
Unless you are very specific and already know what site you are looking for it is extremely difficult to simply find information now, if you just want an answer you locate the relevant reddit or discord community and try your luck there, or ask a LLM to give you an answer because you can’t wade through the sheer amount of non- and disinformation out there now.
Of course, the LLM is also trained on this bullshit and not actually smart, so at best you get an idea where you can look for the information it regurgitated if you make it cite its sources, and do your own research from there.
Are you really telling me this is somehow not much much worse than mid 2000s-2010s internet, where you typed something into google and it almost always found that exact thing you were looking for?
Surely anecdotal, but I have never clicked on a Google Reddit link that didn’t let me to an actual post, most of the time with the actual info I was hoping to find and never have I been served SEO pages.
There was a slight influx of AI generated nonsense a couple months back but that stopped. On my iPhone i Use DuckDuckGo and an perfectly happy. On the Mac where I have more ways to block stuff I use google and also don’t have any issues.
May I ask what kind of things you usually search for?
Depends what you’re trying to do. Looking up a movie? Easy. Looking up niche documentation/issues or error codes just feels hopeless compared to how it used to be.
i mean i have no real issues finding info about various linux errors, is that not niche enough?
or have i just never seen the glory days where a google search would automatically fix your issue and bake a nice cake?
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.
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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 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.
Duckduckgo and (downvotes incoming) brave search.
And I disagree with you, I don’t know a single browser where you can’t change the default search engine.
I like startpage.com. It doesn’t save your searches and I feel like it gives better results than DDG. Also it’s been around for awhile - it used to be ixquick
startpage is owned by a advertising company and is propriatary as fuck
Oh wow that happened 4 years ago?! Time to find a new one…
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.
Duckduckgo if you use a vpn, everyone else throws speedbumos at VPN users… Prove your a human…
