Brave reminds me of early Google. I’m old enough to remember using Google because it was a privacy-respecting service. I’m just waiting for Brave to sell its users out, because if there’s one thing its CEO is good at, it’s that. He’s a money-hungry rat.
Qwant boldly claims not to know anything about you, but will use location data from your IP to personalize search results. I find that extremely untrustworthy, especially because they literally say “the search engine that doesn’t know anything about you” on their homepage, which is an obvious lie.
I use Startpage, but it’s worth noting that it is primarily owned by System1, which is an advertising agency. ~~I use them, but I’m always a bit hesitant to recommend them.~~They’re another one that seems like it could be a bait-and-switch, in the long run. I no longer use nor recommend Startpage.
I’m not sure which features SearXNG people might think are missing since the public instances I use are highly customizable, even compared to mainline search engines like Google or Bing. If anything, it might feel overwhelming to users who aren’t used to having so much control over their search engine. I had a weird experience with a SearXNG instance recently where I searched “al.ost,” but it kept insisting I meant “almost” and persisted in providing results for “almost,” no matter what syntax I tried. This was extremely troubling to me and leads me to question whether I will continue to use it going forward. I’m looking for a search engine that only provides results based on the actual terms I enter. I’m so done with sites that try to do the thinking for me.
Just my two cents on a few of these. Obviously, much of this is highly opinionated on my part.
MAJOR UPDATE: I searched for an address within Startpage yesterday, and now I’ve noticed results are being tailored to that location (I was in another city at the time), so I can no longer recommend Startpage. I will continue my search for a search engine that does not adapt search results based on machine learning, but only serves results based on deliberate input from the user (search terms entered and syntax).
DuckDuckGo HTML seems to fit the bill, at first glance.
Which is great when people use a phone call in situations where an immediate response is warranted – not so great when I realize I’ve had the device occupying one of my hands and my attention for 10 minutes, and the speaker has yet to make a point
There are certain people who when I see calling, I just won’t pick up. On the other hand, when the phone rang at 4am and it was my brother, I knew something terrible had happened. If he had been a frequent caller/offender, I’d have silenced and ignored the call, but I’m really thankful that I picked up. It’s like a “boy who cried wolf” situation.