I am sure there is a good reason for this. I am looking for alternatives to google, and these to be the ones that pop-up most often.
RESOLVED: I used up my 100 searches in kagi pretty quickly, and the experience was really nice. I am quite anti-subscription, so I won’t continue using it. I eliminated brave from my search due to the crypto stuff and whatnot. I am now using mojeek, which gave me better results over DDG when searching for niche stuff. Also I like mojeeks interface a lot more.
Startpage?
You could also try the ddg lite version: no JavaScript, no ad, no ai https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite
Oh, I just realized that I can set this up as my default search from the URL bar!
I already had DDG as the default search in Firefox, but I was slightly annoyed that it kept throwing in AI and other stuff if I searched from a private window or something. I just added DDG Lite as a new search engine (use “https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite/?q=%25s” as the URL), and I set it to the default. We’ll see how that works for me.
People don’t like Brave, the company, or its founder. As usual, it’s mostly politics.
You cant trust someone that sides with Trump
You may want to reconsider your stance on subscriptions if you’re looking to degoogle and go towards more privacy. General stance in the community (if I remember right) is that if you’re not paying for the product, YOU are the product. Meaning they will likely be sharing more information, even if inadvertently through ad networks and whatnot.
If it is on the internet, not self hosted, you are typically the product if you pay or do not pay.
Brave is a crypto bro sham that blocks external ads just to insert their own
Meaning? Do they force you to use crypto services? In my time using them I have not encountered ads.
This answer makes this post feel less like a question and more like an ad.
No, and you can turn them off in settings. I use brave browser. No one is perfect, you gotta pick and choose what is acceptable to you or not when getting into the prigsfy/security realm. If you try to find perfection, you won’t.
For search, I use kagi. I love it. Worth the couple of bucks a month IMO. Free to try with some amount of searches a month on the free plan so you can just go fuck around and see if it is worth it for you too
I haven’t heard of kagi, might try it out. Although it being paid might be a dealbreaker…
Remember if you are not paying with money, you are the product being sold.
Remember if you are paying with money, you are probably still also the product being sold.
This is at least the case for one company, see: Reject Convenience - Privacy Not Included
Sry for the yt link, video isn’t up on Peertube yet
You could always checkout invidious.io to find the video and link it here as well if you want to.
I switched to Kagi a few years ago and I’m not going back. It’s amazing how it’ll just give you the result with zero ads or SEO shit.
You can even downrank specific sites just for you (fuck Pinterest)
Fair reaction, but dont knock it til you try it
Brave is some Crypto-Bro stuff, i’d go with DDG or Kagi. At some point you could get a Junk-PC and run SearXNG on it
If you have the ability to selfhost then searxng is also a very good option.
Why does no one mention Qwant, Mojeek, or Ecosia? Those are pretty good
For me it’s mostly cause of this asshole.
They were also partly funded by Founders Fund, which is Peter Thiel’s VC firm.
Woah excellent link, instant bookmark
Nowadays it’s always needed to use several search engines to fullfit a deeper research. If own or third party search index is irrelevant, every search engine handle it in a different manner. More important as this that the search engine don’t logs your activity, this is given in most search engines, except Google, Bing, (Brave) and Yahoo. Startpage, Mojeek, Ecosia, Qwant, MetaGer, Swisscows (if you have childrens and need a Family safe search) among others, are very valid. Also usefull searches of specific pages (WolphramAlpha, Wiki, Forums, etc) and to add also analytic pages as search engine (Blacklight, VirusTotal, Webbkoll, etc), to check unknown URLs.
Removed by mod
I always recommend https://noai.duckduckgo.com/%s because I’m trying to find results without AI/LLM. Nearly all search engines, including Brave, have AI results as a default. Sure, I can disable the AI results in the engine’s settings but it’s reset the next time I open my browser.
If this is how they actively go against their own browser ethos, what makes you think they will stick to their search engine ethos.?
I prefer Startpage out of all of them, but lately been using Kagi’s APi along side my SearXNG instance and the experience has been quite enjoyable.
Does mojeek have its own index? I see in preferences you can choose where you get results from and brave is one option selected by default.
Options like qwant, ddg, swisscow, etc are also available. Are those any good? Do they use their own indexes? I know ddg doesn’t.
