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