This is a copy/pasted message I wrote up on another thread. As long as there are people in the comments shilling kagi, I will shill my prefered engines. At least my suggestions will bring awareness to free as in freedom projects. I hope to god people paying 10$/month just to not get datacucked by search engines will also learn something and save their money.
SearX/SearXNG is a free and open source, highly customizable, and self-hostable meta search engine. SearX instances act as a middle man, they query other search engines for you, stripping all their spyware ad crap and never having your connection touch their servers. Of course you have to trust the SearX instance host with your query information, but again if you are that paranoid just self host.
I personally trust some foss loving sysadmin that host social services for free out of alturism, who also accepts hosting donations, whos server is located on the other side of the planet, with my query info over Google/Alphabet any day.
Its nice to be able to email and have a human conversation with your search engine provider thats just a knowlegable every day joe who genuinely believes in the project and freely dedicates their resources to it. Consider sending some cash their way to help with upkeep if you like the services they provide, they will probably appreciate and make use of that 10$ better than kagi.
Heres a list of all public searx instances, I personally prefer to use paulgo.io All SearX instances are configured different to index different engines. If one doesn’t seem to give good results try a few others.
Did I mention it has bangs like duckduckgo? If you really need google like for maps and buisness info just use !!g in the query
search.marginalia.nu is a completely novel search engine written and hosted by one dude that aims to prioritize indexing lighter websites little to no javascript as these tend to be personal websites and homepages that have poor SEO and the big search engines won’t index well. If you remember the internet of the early 2000s and want a nostalgia trip this ones for you. Its also open source and self-hostable
Finally, YaCy is another completely novel search engine that uses peer-to-peer technology to power a big webcrawler which prioritizes indexes based off user queries and feedback. Everyone can download yacy and devote a bit of their computing power to both run their own local instance and help out a collective search engine. Companies can also download yacy and use it to index their private intranets.
They have a public instance available through a web portal. To be upfront, YaCy is not a great search engine for what most people usually want, which is quick and relevant information within the first few clicks. But, it is an interesting use of technology and what a true honest-to-god community-operated search engine looks like untainted by SEO scores or corporate money-making shenanigans.
I hope this has been informative to those who believe theres only a few options to pick from, I know these options are so unknown to most people.
Thank you! So I can use Google but stop it from doing the CAPCHA shit repeatedly because it detects my VPN? It’s abuse of the user and I’m tired of it.
Yup! Enjoy :)
I rage quit Google search the other day over that damn captcha
I’m trying Startpage until I get those alternatives down
I’m sure that’s what Google wants. You can either give them your data or you can go somewhere else, but hopefully you choose to give them your data because they make it too inconvenient not to.
Abuse of the user 🤣
Have you seen users privacy settings? They want their data to be harvested. Now come here and let me give you some sponsored content.
When you need a scalable service for tons of users, federated isn’t going to cut it. This is why Apple wants DDG. Point the bajillion crApple lusers at one of your public instances (or even all of them chosen at random each time) and watch it crash and burn overnight. DDG has tons of servers and the infrastructure to hold up while a ton of people search why their luxury device is slowing down every time Apple releases a new one.
Lol Federation is the definition of scalable. Everyone serves their local users -> a miniscule amount of global traffic, everything but auth always stays local.
Universities have been doing it since the beginning of the internet. Email is the biggest example but there are others: eduGAIN and eduroam are the most notable ones coming out of the academic community.
You are confusing a network of distinct servers with a single point of entry that a search engine would need to be. There is no fallback or distribution of search when everything is directed to a single search point, and pointing people to different search sites per search will remove any per-site preferences.
Do people think about what they say any more, or do they see someone who is trying to carefully explain their problem and just go into pure rage and try to disprove them by spewing things that do not make any sense?
No search engine has a “single point of entry”. Every search engine has Cache servers all over the world at almost every major IXP. Nothing would prevent a federated service from operating the same way. Cloudflare or literally any form of loadbalancer or load balancing service could be used to redirect queries to fedisearch (or whatever the service name would be) to the local instance by IP geolocation. Authentication can just be forwarded to the home server via SAML, thats also where the settings can be stored and queried at login time by the local instance. SAML assertions are very scalable, and there needs to be no global login server, since every users login query can be forwarded to his home instance, where his profile is loaded. The full search index could be put into a blockchain that every local instance joins - every instance crawls their area and publishes new results to the chain. You seem to know very little about how the internet works, yet you accuse me of raging.
That the foss community can manage things like that has been proven for years. Debian mirror server network works in a similar way (they run their own loadbalancer ofc), while being cryptographically secure. And if you wanna see a federated login network like i described in action, just go to https://pubs.acs.org/action/ssostart
All these parts i described are existing technology and in global use. The combination is not, but there is nothing that would prevent a foundation from implementing search like this.
datacucked
uuuuusing it
My issue with SearXNG is that I cannot natively use it on mobile (iOS). Might be a small issue for most but I need to be able to type into my browser’s search bar and it utilize that search engine. Open browser > navigate to search homepage > enter query is a lot slower, especially if I am out and about and need information quickly.
If there is some way to configure this I’d love to hear about it, but Safari on iOS limits you to a handful of search engines. I use DDG today.
I did a quick search and found instructions to what I think you are asking for hopefully this helps. The query string for paulgo.io is “https://paulgo.io/search?q=”
I have also heard Xsearch works
searchengine.party also has the query string links for a multitude of different search engines, as well as a comparison of security tests and privacy policies and other functions
Hey just to update I heard XSearch works if that other thing didn’t work out
xSearch on the AppStore lets you use any search engine with Safari.
I don’t know what the fuck is going on with Kagi on Lemmy. They must be using bots or paying people for promoting them. I just don’t get how people can trust them so much when they haven’t released the code for anything, they require you to be logged in which makes the user uniquely identifiable and therefore could easily correlate your searches to your identity (even if they claim not to, it’s just a “trust me, bro”)
Yeah it’s ridiculous, seems like there’s a shill army of this proprietary service here.
Saved. Thank you for your time and thoroughness!
Would also recommend whoogle. They have done public ones iirc but also hand a self hosted option (that I use behind a VPN) for those that line self hosted shit
Wow, USB-C and DDG in the same year? Look at Apple trying to stay relevant 😉
They didn’t switch to USB-C out of the goodness of their hearts. They switched because the EU passed a new law that requires that new smartphones have USB-C ports.
I’m cracking a joke
Ah.
Ah yes, the second largest company in the world “trying to stay relevant”
Im not really brand loyal to a gizmo company but the way android users are so insecure makes me never want to get them.
Lol what made you conclude that OP uses Android?
I never mentioned OP
Then why gratuitously bash android for some weird user-related reason?
Im not bashing android i have to use one of their devices for work; it’s ok. The users on social media with the vitriol for apple and their need to defend android is really cringe.
I hear ya. To be honest, I don’t really engage in such types of discussions - in terms of phones, gaming, browsers, hell, even movies!
Those kind of vitriolic discussions are led by a minority group who has nothing else to do in life but post stupid comments on the internet.
I could say the same about apple users. But then I go to the real world and notice that the vast majority of people couldn’t care less about such dick- (or pussy-) measuring shenanigans.
Of all of the things that I vastly prefer since moving to Lemmy from reddit, anything related to Apple is not one of them. I’m actually surprised because talking about anything Apple on reddit was always a circlejerk pitchfork parade, but Lemmy still seems to outdo. The “trying to stay relevant comment” is honestly hilarious. Sure, the richest company with more than 50% of the smartphone market, that basically feeds design to the rest of the industry is trying to stay relevant.
And another thing worth addressing, It’s probably 50/50 whether the EU is forcing them to USB-C, or just providing cover for them to move to USB-C. Modern Apple (after 1997) rarely has used proprietary standards for cables/connectors, and when they have it’s pretty obviously because there isn’t a better option, or more likely, there isn’t an option that is suited to their purpose*. Apple is/was largely the reason we’re even talking about USB, being one of the first to really adopt it. Then the dock connector for iPods, which is probably the most major example of them using a proprietary connector. If you read that link (just wiki) you’ll see that the dock connector did things that no other standard connector did at the time, and it did it in a form factor that would work with iPods. Fast forward 10 years and Apple eats shit in the press for changing to Lightning, which pre-dated USB-C and has obvious advantages over one of the worst computer connectors in modern history - micro-USB**. Apple contributed significantly to the USB-C spec, which includes many of the advantages that Lightning had first, built off of the work they did with Intel in creating another standard, Thunderbolt.
And then on to today, where Apple is “forced” to use USB-C. Again, in 2016, Apple moved all of their high end laptops to exclusively USB-C, for which they would again be pilloried. People are still pissed those laptops dropped USB-A and MagSafe in favor of trying to drive adoption of USB-C and a one-connector-rules-them-all world. They also moved their Pro iPads over to C in 2018. Basically, Apple started moving its high-end, less price conscious customers to C long before legislation was a gleam in anyone’s eye. Their cheaper products (base model iPads) and mass-consumer products (iPhones) they moved much slower on, and even then there were a slate of “Apple keeps changing connectors all of the time!” (twice in 20 years) outrage-bait articles.
Yes, Apple was “forced” to use the connector they created the first design references for (Lightning/Thunderbolt, and to a lesser extend Mini-DisplayPort) and then helped design, then moved to before most, in a bid to stay “relevant” in a field they already dominate.
* Also worth noting that Apple was a main driver of adoption of USB-A, and took heat when they converted iMacs to it over PS/2, far before most PC vendors did.
** This alone, the amount of negative press they garnered, meant that there was likely no way Apple was going to move iPhones off of Lightning for 10 years.
Surprised to see so many plugging kagi in this thread. A subscription to search the internet seems crazy to me. Is it that good?
It’s like Google back in 2010. You find stuff you are looking for without pages and pages of ads, spam, and clickbait.
If you hit a domain which is obviously spam, you can block it forever. If you find a domain you really like, you can promote it for future results.
It’s clear that Google’s motivation is no longer to offer good results. It’s to maximise the time you’re on the site, and the number of ads and spam sites you click. Their goal is now, literally, to feed you bad results.
This article is a pretty good summary of why, by Google’s own words, an ad driven search experience will be rubbish:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics
Not only does Kagi produce great search results, as good as “old Google” IMO, its business model means the above cannot (or at least, shouldn’t) happen. If it ever changed its model to include ads etc it would collapse so fast.
So for me, unlike the other poster, I’d recommend it to everyone who’s finding the existing search engines are rubbish and full of useless Etsy and SEO etc links.
I can’t find any information about their search engine crawler. Isn’t it standard for search engines to label their crawlers or something?
It’s conventional to do this, but a user agent string is entirely up to the client, and robots.txt is just a suggestion.
So for the best results, you probably want to mock Google’s crawler because it’s suicidal to block that if you want search traffic.
Brave words divorced from reality.
Cable companies wouldn’t insert ads, people pay for a premium experience with cable instead of getting their TV free over the air. If they did people would just cancel and watch free tv.
Then later: Streaming companies wouldn’t insert ads, the ability to watch on your time, terms and without interruption is part of the appeal, if they did their customers would leave them and they’d collapse. It would be the death of any company foolish enough to do so.
🤡
Markets and competition will save us cried the fool with no knowledge of history.
If they grow they need to keep growing, if their results are good enough they’ll introduce “limited” tracking for “trusted partners” with limited ads that are “valuable and relevant”. And from there it can spiral more but you’ve already lost.
As revenue, tracking, taking a big yearly check from Zuck or whoever to share your data with them. It’s a good source of revenue and unless this company is privately financed by one weirdo entirely out of their own pockets they have a responsibility to investors to get them ever increasing year over year returns.
Of course the typical thing to do is to get big enough first like streaming. Train the fool consumers to pay for something they’re getting for free, normalize that, grow, then sock them with ads, tracking, inconveniences and train them to accept more and more of it.
I mean I guess it could happen… so I guess why trust anyone? May as well just switch it all off!
deleted by creator
I started using duck duck go a few months ago and have felt like my search results are a lot more useful since.
The maps function on it sucks though
DDG uses Apple Maps.
Doesn’t Google pay billions to Apple for the top spot? Why would they want to lose that stream of free cash?
If the goodwill they garner from that makes APPL go up because it matches the privacy expectation they are branding themselves with, they might be making even more money anyway.
Exactly. They are trying to win the privacy game, so a small sacrifice now could turn to be quite profitable.
A Washington post article I was reading yesterday said google pays apple $19 billion this year to be the default browser on iPhones.
There is a big anti trust case against Google right now and this arrangement with apple is one of the topics of interest. If Google loses they could be forced to stop paying.
Who says they’re not negotiating a larger stream of cash?
Duck duck go sucks for porn I stopped using it a while ago. Until they fix that I’m out.
The man has priorities
Bing image search is surpringly efficient for this
Isn’t it the same search index?
Or piracy
I’ve been using it this way for years. I don’t use google products at all now and don’t miss it.
Duck duck go needs a lot of work to replace Google search.
I’ve used it for years but often I still get the shits and just bring Google up after duck duck go fails to find what I’m looking for.
Huh I’m also a regular DDG user but I never have that experience.
Yeah, have had a similar experience. I find the more specific or niche a question is, the better google is at finding relevant pages. DDG is perfectly fine the rest of the time, though, so I keep it as the default.
I usually forget I’m using it. Exception is for work - I frequently have to specify
g!to get Stackoverflow results to show up at the top.The android app is nice, especially the app tracking blocker. It takes up the VPN connection tho
Did DDG move away from consolidating results from Google and other engines?
On Safari (iOS), Apple makes it easy to switch. Settings > Safari > Search Engine and select which one you want. I’ve been using DDG not quite a year and at first the change felt a lil jarring, but knowing I’m contributing less to Google’s ad revenue and their long list of privacy violations, I’m comfortable now sticking with DDG. Change isn’t always easy, convenient, or comfortable, but it can be done with just the tiniest bit of effort.
this is a very poor argument. every browser I’ve used, even Chrome, makes it easy to change the default search engine in the settings.
Were they making an argument?
I wasn’t making any argument, merely offering advice how to change something and my experience in doing so. But my comment clearly upset a lot of Chrome users because I mentioned Google not respecting your privacy, which is a given for a lot of companies.
As I understood it, they were implying that Apple’s default is Google but they still care about privacy because they make it easy to switch to Duckduckgo.
I pointed out that this has been an essential feature in web browsers for years.
I tried to switch to DDG as my default search on iOS but my adblocker doesn’t block ads on it but it does on google, so I switched back
DDG has a built-in option to determine whether you want to see ads or not.
deleted by creator
Sweet, I can switch back then
I tried to switch but the results were terrible. I ended up on bing which is still inferior to google but better than being google even if it is another behemoth data gathering company. At this point im just trying to stop centralizing who gets all my data don’t lest it’s a bit fragmented.
ddg gets its results from bing, I’d recommend startpage if you want google results while being privacy respecting.
DDG doesn’t solely use Bing, though. From what I understand, it uses Bing + it’s own crawler and algorithm so its results are almost always different than vanilla Bing.
Duck duck go is crap these days, probably since it uses Bing. All I ever get are “7 best ways to…” click bait, probably AI generated “articles”.
I’ve been trying to use DDG but honestly it sucks. I can’t imagine Apple switching to it, it would just make things worse for users, who commonly can’t figure out how to switch defaults. I think it’s just a negotiating point.
Google search has been fundamentally broken for at least two years. When the protests started on Reddit 90% of Google’s search results we’re broken.
I found this too. After the reddit fiasco, I found DDG to have no downside. The search syntax is a little different (google’s is better) but the outputs arent radically different.
That didn’t stop them from plowing ahead with Apple Maps, even though its debut was total garbage.
Vote for Brave search.
Is ddg any good?
I feel like Bing would just be better at this point.
DDG is great, highly recommended. It reminds me of what Google used to be.
It’s garbage outside of the US for local results. Bing is somewhat better, but still not good enough. In the US though, plenty of good alternatives to Google search
I’m outside US (Philippines), most searches are local as long as your country is set on DDG settings. I’ve been using DDG since 2021 and it’s refreshing that I actually searching with my actual query, instead of “click the first, random result” and call it a day.
I honestly might have to look into it then. Google is still pretty decent got me but I’m just finding myself either using Reddit to find an answer or asking chat gpt (purely excel related questions)
It does show you more relevant results based on your query, withou doing any guessing about what you might have meant by it. That being said, sometimes I use Google to search for something when DDG is giving me bad results. But overall I would recommend, it’s muxh more better experience with the results I am seeing. I have tried Bing for a while as well, but it was thinking too much instead of just showing me the results.
Removed by mod
I’ve used it for a few months, and in the end I was always using !g
It’s just not good enough in a lot of contexts. I’m having a much better time with kagi
I just switched from ddg (after years of using it across all my devices) to kagi, but ddg is good. The results can be iffy at times, especially on unusual or niche queries, but their bang system lets you forward the query to other engines to see if they have the result you are looking for. In my household where I control and direct the tech, ddg has been the standard for many years for all our devices. I recommend it to everyone who is still using a big-name search engine.
Upvote this question, it’s pretty relevant to the issue of whether this would have been good for Apple (no, it would not have been)
DDG is my default search on mobile, but half the time I end up back on Google. Google is better at guessing exactly what I want and giving that content fast, such as the weather, people always ask answers, or quick facts about things that saves me from loading the site underneath the result.
But sometimes I know exactly what I want and Google won’t give it to me - because it decided I want something else.
That’s where a well built query can work better on DDG. However… DDG is more susceptible to backlink spamming and old school SEO techniques to rank content near the top. So depending on the people behind the search results, some queries are fine and some can still be garbage.
Also for image and video search Google is top.
Strong disagree on Google having a better video/image search. Bing is top there, then Google, then DDG, imo.
