this post was submitted on 23 May 2024
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So ddg is down, so I visit Google. It's been some years.

I just can't believe how poor it's results are, and how it's trying to suggest things it think I might also want (and failing miserably).

I just assumed ddg would be the lesser, but I use it for privacy. Turns out I'm wrong.

How long has Google been this bad?

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago (5 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (3 children)

I'm currently using searx.be with good results

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Searx improved a lot since I last used it. Was really slow before

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Its searxng now (the original searx is dead) and is quite good. Performance differs. I've seen very slow instances, but when I started hosting my own semi-private instance, I saw how fast it can be, if the server isn't a potato.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

How can I set it as default browser on Android Brave?

Not able to do it

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago

Sorry, but I don't know how to do that. I use Cromite, not Brave.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Do you ever have moments where you type something to search into the address bar and you just get taken to the instance home page? That happens to me every now and then and I'm wondering if it's the instance I'm using

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I have not experienced this, no. Unsure as to what that could be, but if another instance doesn't cause that issue that would be a good sign that it is the current instance you're on.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I've switched back to searx.be and I haven't faced the issue yet. Must've been the instance then. Strange

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

I've collected these 3 so far, but Swiss Cows if you go deep enough uses Bing. I'm not sure about Mojeek or Start Page.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I have good experience with brave search, after I moved away from the crap Qwant actually is

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Qwant is that bad? I remember hearing decent things about it a few years ago but I never got around to trying it because it's blocked in my country for some god forsaken reason.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

That's exactly one of the reasons why I find it shit. It's not blocked in my country but as soon I need to go abroad, can't use it anymore. There's more reasons why it sucks and some of them are recent

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

That's exactly one of the reasons why I find it shit. It's not blocked in my country but as soon I need to go abroad, can't use it anymore. There's more reasons why it sucks and some of them are recent

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Swisscows does use Bing, Startpage uses Bing and/or Google depending upon where you are, we are fully independent: https://www.searchenginemap.com/ is a visualisation that might be useful

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

So is Mojeek a standalone since it's yellow? It looks like a lot of other people use them and not the other way around. Yep is cool, but I think they get their money from the sites that pay them? I looked at it yesterday, it's sort of a strange set up that I'm not sure I understand.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

yes we are indeed a standalone, the sizes of bubbles are reflections of the number of index-usage relationships yep is attached to ahrefs: https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/03/yep-search-engine/ where I can speak to where results come from, I couldn't tell you about their model

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Mojeek gives good results, I'll keep trying it. I'm not sure about yep though, how do the people get paid? I didn't see any sign up. It sounds like it's a platform for their SEO subscribers.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

sorry for taking a while to get back but the main source of mojeek revenue is api sales, having people pay to access results for different applications (bing does similar i.e. duckduckgo, qwant, ecosia)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

That's interesting and a decent way to do it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I believe Startpage uses Google

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Mojeek isn't perfect, but it's truly independent search engine.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

and when people let us know where we fall down we're able to make it better, growing alongside the userbase!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

I was gonna try it, but then I saw this: https://d-shoot.net/kagi.html

The CEO doesn’t understand GDPR, so I’m not inclined to let them handle my data, and even pay them for the privilege.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I can’t justify Kagi’s pricing but I liked it. I’d blow through the cheapest plan in a week. Neeva was pretty good too before they pivoted, also pricey imo though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I blew through the $5 plan in a short amount of time. I'm a curious person, I guess! I really like it though so decided $120/year was worth it for unlimited.

Compared to DDG (Bing) the search results are really good. When using DDG I would frequently revert to Google, but not with Kagi.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

Same. I work and play at my computer, so I certainly get my use out of it. I wouldn't pay for it if both my work and my hobbies weren't both on my PC.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 5 months ago (3 children)

If you have spare hardware lying around and a public IP (or a server anyway), you can selfhost SearXNG.
If you're fine with paying 12$/month (with tax) for a customizable search engine, very accurate and transparently sourced/quoted LLM, and just a better index than any other search engine I know, use Kagi. I heard some rumors and bad things, but nothing to do with privacy, only the aforementioned tax.
And for a free search engine which claims privacy and is an alternative to DDG, with its own index afaik, Brave.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Kagi is anything but private friendly. Their CEO claims only criminals actually want anonymity.

They also think they don't need pay taxes or to abide by GDPR if they invent their own definitions of the laws.

https://d-shoot.net/kagi.html

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This is an article often quoted, which makes it seem like it's a kind of consensus. Yet one of the main points, taxes, can just be disproven by reading the Kagi FAQ about it. Find it by searching "Kagi inc tax" on any search engine, like Kagi itself. Or just https://help.kagi.com/kagi/faq/sales-tax-vat.html.

We weren't initially required to collect sales tax/VAT until reaching certain thresholds, typically defined by the number of customers in a jurisdiction or sales volume.

And sooo many other things in this article are purely based on assumptions, incorrect data and misquotes. This personal blog is exactly none better than your average hustle-finance-nazi-bro podcast, in almost all terms (except political views).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Misquotes? There are literally screenshots in the article showing full quotes, I don't know who are you trying to lie to...

And just because Kagi put some text on their website doesn't make it true.
Taxes don't work like that (at least not VAT) and you're a fool for trusting a company which tried to commit a fraud.

Some EU countries do have tax exemptions for small businesses, which Kagi isn't by any definition.

Anyway, that sure didn't take long for you to prove Godwin's law, huh?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

How are SearXNG results? I tried a self hosted yacy instance, but its results are pre-AltaVista bad.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Sick never heard or searxng, hosting my own instance now