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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..
Duckduckgo is surprisingly okay, even with non-english queries by using the region selector (your experience may vary)
ddg is my primary right now, it absolutely sucks for korean queries sadly
The modern internet is getting filthier by the day. Gone are the days where independent software used to be a thing I suppose.
Oh, idk. The entire internet and supporting infrastructure pretty much runs on opensourced software. When you're talking about a search engine tho, unless you have a data center, a huge pile of cash, and a willingness to part with most of it, search engines are expensive to run.
Searxng works fine for me. It's at least as good as google?
Entirely depends on the instance admin and whether or not they keep it maintained and up to date.
Kinda, I was a owner of a public instance. It was pretty high on the list so I guess some people used it. The Problem was, that Google ratelimited me all the time. Not even with 5 pretty good residential proxies it was working. The only querys without ratelimits are bing and sometime wikipedia.
SearXNG works flawlessly....
searxng also doesn't really seem to work these days..
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
"internet indexer" should really be a government / EU / UN sponsored public utility thing. And then you have front ends that can improve the search query and filter and sort the results.
I don't know how much it would cost / how large a data center it would take to cache the web pages like google does. But there is just no reason to have so much wealth / advertising drain from the public for such a fundamental thing.
This might be one of those things where self hosting isn't worth the pain, like email.
I've been using Kagi for several years now and have been very happy with it.
They are literally giving part of your subscription fee to fucking Russia. In comparison, DuckDuckGo have ended their partnership with Yandex. Vlads refusal to follow suit and his steadfast support of Yandex is quite telling to say the least.
Yet another part of your subscription goes to Elon Musks xAI to support Grok in their AI assistant. Even if you are not using that model, all paying users are effectively subsidizing the cost of the Grok API calls. You can't opt out of that.
Searxng has been pretty sweet, been hosting my own for about a year and some change with pretty good results.
All of this when you get the super excellent Kagi for 10 dollars, from an actual search company that values privacy.
Its exactly what everyone wants but no, can't pay 10 dollars I guess. :)
Elsewhere in thread it talks about kagi giving money to Russia and Musk which is not something I'd support
from an actual search company that values privacy.
California company obliged by FVEY? While I appreciate their efforts, American based companies kind of have a history of abandoning their privacy-respecting ways once subpoenaed.
USA gag orders are real. Cannot trust US companies selling privacy at all.
I've seen so many people say that kagi is overhyped
I run SearXNG and haven't looked back honestly, could never get on with Whoogle's UI
I replaced SearxNG with degoog on my server. Feels very much like Google, yet it is not. I did enable Google for search results and image, but it refuses to work (good). Am using DuckDuckGo and Startpage instead, through degoog, of course.