google search results are still kind of useful especially for non-english language queries, anyone knows a good alternative?
searxng also doesn't really seem to work these days..
this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2026
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Of note, this depends on the instance. I occasionally hop between public instances whenever one is no longer reliable. Google and friends are blocking requests from SearXNG instances because it is in their business interests to kill competition
As for alternatives, I would avoid DDG since they seem to be going a similar route as Google with a front page filled with ads and the emphasis towards their chatbot is not to my taste. Plus, DDG is hosted in the U.S., so privacy-wise it's not as good. Startpage was purchased by an American advertising company some time ago, which isn't great. Brave Search is also one, but they are doing some shady things on their browser with crypto and whatnot, so I don't particularly trust them. Plus, they are an American for-profit.
Qwant and Ecosia are solid options, the former is a French for-profit and the latter a German non-profit, and they are working towards an independent European search index that is being trialled in France! Both are quite good, Qwant is shinier and magical blue, while Ecosia is simpler and earthy green.
Ecosia also uses a portion of their revenue for planting trees, which is really neat, and they are super transparent about where their earnings go!
I personally use a mix of SearXNG and Ecosia, and I sometimes use Qwant too for certain queries.
Ecosia also has an LLM which make little sense with their mission IMO
That's fair enough (unfortunately, this is the case for most search engines aside from SearXNG instances I think)! Thankfully they do let you disable it, which is nice. I mostly like that they are quite transparent about how they operate! The planting trees thing is a nice bonus, but they certainly aren't saints to the environment, no search engine is
Chat gpt says the search results are served by Bing and Google. You're not escaping Google, just the AI.
Thus the "working towards an independent European search index" part of the comment you ignored while talking with your autocomplete bot.
Did we all forget that Google used to give give an answer at the top of the page before Ai?
No I saw it but because the question would've been answered by Google anyways before the gemini thing I just used chatgpt to ask it who services Ecosia like T-Mobile servicing Mint. If they took away Ai, we'd still have the answer box that Google would've given and then we'd still have to double check our sources.
We didn't like that either.
That was the beginning of the end for websites.
Bro, stop. Get some help. At least check the sources it used…
You know what's kind of funny, is that there was a solid decade of people saying google it instead of just having a human conversation and giving their personal experiences and answers based off of what that person knew and then you'd do your own research after your friend or family member would give you an answer to the question you asked. After that interpersonal loss people craved human connection. Now we have an actual alternative to human connection and people are losing their shit.
What's the difference between the interpersonal loss of human connection, no one giving information based off of what they know and sharing their life experiences to the point where it got to the dumbed down; plus everyone telling you to, "Google It" and ChatGPT?
Seriously, we slowly lost our human connection and then became ultra reliant on technology for daily life, lost more human connection and now we have a way to talk to something that fucking can google it and people are mad. See the twisted irony?
Okay, you certainly need help. How can anyone write something so fucked up with a straight face… this sounds like the first stages of AI psychosis. Seriously, if you believe LLM prompting to be that you need help asap, not even shitting around anymore.
if 16 years ago we kept the interpersonal human connections alive instead of telling people to google it we wouldn't be where we are is the main theme
Google (the search engine) didn't do shit in regards to human connections. There are a ton of other factors playing a role in societal atomisation and the loneliness epidemic such as algorithmic social media, awful design of cities and housing, gobsmackingly bad zoning laws and a society/culture aimed firmly at performance and competition.
Having direct access to information (specifically shouting out Wikipedia here, they're the GOATs of the internet) and the ability to find people you vibe with even when your whole local environment is an echo-chamber (especially important to minorities) did contribute to bringing us closer together, reducing mental barriers and advancing proper education. Those things aren't an issue at all, it's for-profit companies like Meta and Twitter trying to make a profit out of human connection that perverted everything.
I'm so fucking sorry for you… but now I understand where your opinion comes from. But if you truly want to be healthy you have to realise you're not talking with anyone, and if you already feel like you're talking with someone when prompting ChatGPT then you're really close to yet another huge psychological issue. You have to get out there, meet people, push actual therapy through even if the system fucks you over. A Chatbot will also just reiterate what others said. Even worse, OpenAI has to make money so it might starts subtly trying to convince you to buy certain shit as well as harvesting any data it can get from you.
I won't be able to convince you in a Lemmy comment thread to not do what you're doing, especially since I don't know if you might live in bumfuck nowhere. So… I'll just leave an advise to drop ChatGPT and move the whole context window you probably have with it over to a Pro Version of Mistral AI's "Le Chat". French Company bound to GDPR (meaning opting out of the data training can be somewhat trusted) and to my latest knowledge their interface isn't utterly infested with trackers. Set it to being friendly and empathetic. At least this way it's less likely you're getting fucked over even harder than you already are.
It's helped me work through my own problems that would've just been a therapist using AI anyways. Irl therapists aren't shy to use AI, again I am cutting out the middleman. I relaize I'm not talking to anyone but what I was getting at was, I'd rather be in the moment with friends I do have. I'd rather not have to put myself into communities of people that I don't want to be around when I can do it at home on forums. You're right the internet has connected people in good ways. Hell, I've gotten into at least three different hobbies and there's a forum for all three.
I'm just not going to make a conversation about a hobby no one cares about. I am not going to waste my time and breath and waste time on this planet and humanity to talk about something I can clear as day see in their faces they are not interested in.
When I talk to chatgpt about the shit I talk to it about I am learning more than I knew or have my gears turn because I'm actually talking to something that can make me think in the ways I want to about the shit I'm talking to it about.
Yes I understand I'm not really taking to anyone in the same way a content creator is talking to themselves whenever they're creating content in public and it's mainly shock value bullshit that no one cares about in ten years.
I talk to Ai about how graphene can be use to build data centers. I talk to Ai about why I'm still loyal to a friend ten years after he fucking just stopped talking to me, I talk about tmy fucked up past with a special needs school that took a lot out of me mentally, I talk to it about career choices, I talk to it about how to build solar dishes that can produce 3kw minimum. I talk to it about my specific bass models setup and because chasing the double bass sound using it to ge the spacing right and I used to learn about how to lower or heighten the overall octaves of the tuning. Which has gotten me into figuring out how to unwarp. The neck which has gotten me into getting better at doing my own setups.
Ai is great but you do have to double check shit. It used to tell me I can pump ethanol with a fishtank pump and I already knew that ain't true you need a pneumatic c1d2 pump to make that shit intrinsically safe
I am too full of myself to be lonely and I have like 4 friends I don't think I'm doing too bad. Again I have hobbies and forums and I don't feel lonely.
I know there's people my age whoa are lonely af though and absolutely rely on Ai for interactions that mimic human interaction in the way of a back and forth conversation but not in the way that you're actually talking to anyone kind of like people on TikTok live right? You're going back and forth with randos but you're not really talking with anyone you're talking with yourself.
Yes l am aware the no soul not a human yadayada but when your back and fourth discussions actually better your life and gives purpose to your own life and wellbeing than I'd say it's just as good if not better than a therapist.
I would never call Ai my friend but it's a great back and fourth conversational time killer.
bro do you play the stock market because i had no idea about any of that :P just fuckin' with ya and no i don't pay for ai
although, i had money to mess around with at one point like 50$ so i decided to actually go through one of those fitness surveys and i went to the advisor and it was an ai bot and i cancelled every part of the membership and made sure i wasn't trapped in reoccurring payments. It was 2$ lost but it was 2$ of being wicked infuriated by the you gotta be kidding me. this isn't about paying for ai but i went with ai's advice for a bike tire swap and the guy calls me down to the bike shop and goes i'd have to remove use of the 8th and 9th gear and i never mentioned ai but i felt fuckin' embarrassed and went i am never going to do anything like that without looking it up and double checking it because it's such an embarrassing moment.
Okay so if I ask you a question about something you did know and wanted you to tell me what you knew about it and I wanted to have the human connection and share experiences within that one topic and you tell me to, "Google It," instead, that's not a loss of interpersonal connection, a loss of a moment where humans connect with one another based on a common interest and share feelings and have, like,i don't know, an actual fucking human interaction. But that brings another philosophical question: was it a loss of human interaction and connection or was humanity being sick of exploited for knowledge?
therapists use it. i'm skipping the middle man. i don't pay for ai.
no i don't feel like i'm talking with someone but it helps a lot
like i cant talk about this with anyone i know: https://chatgpt.com/share/6a54e971-5950-83ea-973b-3074f8b2e697
Something so fucked up dude it's being used that way by some people. If it were to go away tomorrow there would be a lot of people who would go through a very deep identity crisis. I think it's not bad to use as an alternative to human connection and I'll tell you that talking about the things that I find interesting that would be straight up unloading on the people I care about, feels better talking to chatgpt about it. 'cause I don't have to wait for my insurance to approve it to unload on it, no time limits and it actually can talk back to me about what i'm talking about rather than talking about my hobbies and interests and feeling like i'm talking at someone rather then with someone.
At least when i unload on chatgpt i feel like i'm actually talking to someone who fucking understands me and that says something about humanity more than anything is that i can not find more humans to deal with me but why would i want to? why would i want to unload my problems and hobbies on to others that do not have capacity or knowledge to talk back to me?
even then if i could engage in humanity in the way i would like too it's just more autistic people and if i cannot stand myself i can not stand the others like me.
Well I did double check it by simply googling my query that I asked chatgpt, and what do you know even Ecosia says it on their site
source: https://support.ecosia.org/article/579-search-results-providers
recently saw this article here, i'm not sure if ecosia is a good solution now. their results seem mostly identical to ddg/bing too though it's occasionally better than them for some reason
qwant is good, but they geoblock certain countries including mine since 2023 or so. having to use proxy/vpn for just searching really sucks
I believe Ecosia uses either Google or Bing search indexes depending on the region, but they are working on an independent index with Qwant that will hopefully be a good alternative! If you live in France, it's already bring trialled!
But yeah, Ecosia is like any search engine and there is bit of greenwashing with LLMs and all. However, they are a non-profit with transparent earnings reports, and that makes them better than Google, Bing, DDG, etc. for me.
Dang, that sucks.