The French government is considering a law that would require web browsers – like Mozilla’s Firefox – to block websites chosen by the government.
Have you tried Yandex? Other than being Russian, it is a great browser. And instead of having to use search operators, rephrase or click verbatim on Google to find something, Yandex actually gives you proper search results, especially in photos. It is like Google before 2016. I used Lynx years ago, totally forgot about it.
I use LibreWolf as a browser and Qwant, Startpage, SearX (murena spot) and SwissCows as search engines.
All of these respect my privacy. Yandex doesn’t.
Also:
I just went to Yandex.com. It immediately told me information about my “location” (I fake it). That’s kind of unsettling because I never gave that info or asked for anything related to me or my location. After a single search I got prompted to install the app to search “privately without tracking”. The app is rated 6/10 privacy by Exodus. Exodus lists “Yandex Ad” as one of the app trackers. Sounds lovely.
The search results are quite similar to the ones I would get on SP or Qwant. Nothing special here. Wikipedia, Maps, IMDb, stuff like that. Incredible.
I also need to do captchas regularly, which is very annoying.
It’s not even particularly fast. Qwant Lite approaches warp speed in comparison.
In conclusion:
This search engine is nothing special. If you need their browser for it to do all the fancy stuff you said, it’s basically a piece of shit. Websites that need browser specific code should not exist.
