What search engine do you recommend that isn't Google or Bing?

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.

jflorez,

DuckDuckGo on Firefox. If you truly want to de-google your life avoid Chrome and Chromium based browsers like Edge and Brave

Xatolos,
@Xatolos@reddthat.com avatar

DuckDuckGo is Bing. It’s just stripped of Microsoft “extras”.

TheMadnessKing,

But it doesn’t track you. So, better Privacy

cyberpunk007,

How so? It existed before bing.

imkali,

They have changed the way they gather results since they first launched.

cyberpunk007,

Ok so it’s a bing proxy basically?

kzhe,

DDG uses Bing for 100% of its results.

Jourei,

Interesting, when DDG fails to give me anything worth while, I go to Bing and usually get what I’m looking for.

cyberpunk007,

People use bing? I find the results just like a dogs breakfast. Such a mess.

Jourei,

I use bing more and more. It’s not fantastic but feels like it’s on track to be ome better than google.

LastYearsPumpkin,

It used to be Google search without the extras.

ichbinjasokreativ,

Brave search is also really good now

cyberpunk007,

Brave statement

ichbinjasokreativ,

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.

kzhe,

People aren’t downgotinf because you’re right or wrong, but because Brave is homophobic.

kzhe,

brave is pretty widely disliked by people (including me) for it’s CEO’s homophobia. That’s probably why you’re being down voted.

Joker,

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.

cashews_best_nut,

Do you like to swim in your cash vault like Scrooge McDuck?

kzhe,

Kagi really isn’t that pricy.

scytale,

You can absolutely configure the default search engine on your browser to a custom one in some cases. I use startpage and it isn’t in the default options, but it can be added.

joel_feila,
@joel_feila@lemmy.world avatar

You want a free search, Brave. Don’t like brave, then qwant. I use Kagi. It costs money but it is great.

jcrabapple,
@jcrabapple@infosec.pub avatar

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.

cashews_best_nut,

Ugh, paid. In this economy!?

jcrabapple,
@jcrabapple@infosec.pub avatar

$5/month. Worth it.

jemikwa,

Even better if you can get into a family plan with friends

praise_idleness,

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.

Mr_Blott,

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

skeeter_dave,

For that price I can just spool up a vps and run a Searxng instance.

festus,

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.

douglasg14b,
@douglasg14b@lemmy.world avatar

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.

RootBeerGuy,
@RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

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.

Cralder,

deleted_by_author

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    jcrabapple,
    @jcrabapple@infosec.pub avatar

    Sorry it didn’t work for you…

    jvrava9,
    @jvrava9@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    SearXNG

    TiffyBelle,
    @TiffyBelle@lemmy.world avatar

    I personally enjoy DDG. Their privacy policy for their search is straightforward and there’s no evidence that they’re not abiding by it. I find it tends to prioritize higher quality blogs and articles ahead of social media results.

    I sometime use Brave Search as it seems to do better at giving social media/forum results as they seem to be prioritized higher by it, when I’m looking for more discussion-based content.

    heyfrancis,
    @heyfrancis@lemmy.ml avatar

    +1 for DDG, but i dont get it why some comments here said it is just bing

    StupidBrotherInLaw, (edited )

    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.

    crimroy,

    Which is great, privacy-wise, but results-wise it is just Bing. DDG is what I use, but that’s all it is

    MrMobius, (edited )

    I’ve been using qwant for a few weeks and it gives me quite satisfying and accurate results. Before I had been using ecosia for years but the results can be lackluster sometimes. Especially when you search very specific “niche” things (like obscure Linux problems troubleshooting). But I’m still looking for a browser which let’s you pick multiple languages for results.

    deadcatbounce,
    @deadcatbounce@reddthat.com avatar

    Firefox allowed you to define the default search and have many many engines listed. That’s been a standard feature for many years.

    cerement,
    @cerement@slrpnk.net avatar

    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

    https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/be6e8359-dc40-4e49-a901-e906fc3482d6.webp

    deadcatbounce,
    @deadcatbounce@reddthat.com avatar

    www.startpage.com

    Owned now by a marketing company. I’ve been using it for many years and never had my results noticeable affect my advertising incoming.

    It’s a proxy for Google which is why I use it. I have really started to use ChatGPT in anger yet as the trivial don’t need it.

    I’m not connected to them in any way.

    Vilian,

    ecosia, like knowing that my searchs are helping the world a little

    Kolanaki,
    @Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

    I just make a post in NoStupidQuestions and use y’all like a search engine. :P

    ThrowawayPermanente,

    I post answers to NoStupidQuestions with most of the keywords you’re looking for and a link to my AI-generated blog. Your move.

    ShittyBeatlesFCPres,

    I use startpage.com on desktop. They provide Google results (sort of like DDG uses Bing results) so it’s not some autonomous magic privacy thing but it’s what I want from a search engine.

    It reminds me of Google pre-enshittification.

    EmasXP,

    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

    Swedneck,
    @Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    if nothing else qwant has a good map, based on openstreetmap but with a vector renderer and with tripadvisor integration so it’s really easy to find restaurants

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