This is a copy/pasted message I wrote up on another thread. As long as there are people in the comments shilling kagi, I will shill my prefered engines. At least my suggestions will bring awareness to free as in freedom projects. I hope to god people paying 10$/month just to not get datacucked by search engines will also learn something and save their money.
SearX/SearXNG is a free and open source, highly customizable, and self-hostable meta search engine. SearX instances act as a middle man, they query other search engines for you, stripping all their spyware ad crap and never having your connection touch their servers. Of course you have to trust the SearX instance host with your query information, but again if you are that paranoid just self host.
I personally trust some foss loving sysadmin that host social services for free out of alturism, who also accepts hosting donations, whos server is located on the other side of the planet, with my query info over Google/Alphabet any day.
Its nice to be able to email and have a human conversation with your search engine provider thats just a knowlegable every day joe who genuinely believes in the project and freely dedicates their resources to it. Consider sending some cash their way to help with upkeep if you like the services they provide, they will probably appreciate and make use of that 10$ better than kagi.
Heres a list of all public searx instances, I personally prefer to use paulgo.io
All SearX instances are configured different to index different engines. If one doesn't seem to give good results try a few others.
Did I mention it has bangs like duckduckgo? If you really need google like for maps and buisness info just use !!g in the query
search.marginalia.nu is a completely novel search engine written and hosted by one dude that aims to prioritize indexing lighter websites little to no javascript as these tend to be personal websites and homepages that have poor SEO and the big search engines won't index well. If you remember the internet of the early 2000s and want a nostalgia trip this ones for you. Its also open source and self-hostable
Finally, YaCy is another completely novel search engine that uses peer-to-peer technology to power a big webcrawler which prioritizes indexes based off user queries and feedback. Everyone can download yacy and devote a bit of their computing power to both run their own local instance and help out a collective search engine. Companies can also download yacy and use it to index their private intranets.
They have a public instance available through a web portal. To be upfront, YaCy is not a great search engine for what most people usually want, which is quick and relevant information within the first few clicks. But, it is an interesting use of technology and what a true honest-to-god community-operated search engine looks like untainted by SEO scores or corporate money-making shenanigans.
I hope this has been informative to those who believe theres only a few options to pick from, I know these options are so unknown to most people.
Thank you! So I can use Google but stop it from doing the CAPCHA shit repeatedly because it detects my VPN? It's abuse of the user and I'm tired of it.
Yup! Enjoy :)
I rage quit Google search the other day over that damn captcha
I'm trying Startpage until I get those alternatives down
I'm sure that's what Google wants. You can either give them your data or you can go somewhere else, but hopefully you choose to give them your data because they make it too inconvenient not to.
I use Kagi right now but search.marginalia.nu and YaCy seem really cool. Hell, I might package YaCy and write a module for it for NixOS :^)
I’m trying Kagi now but I’m having mixed feelings. Search results are mixed at best for some pretty commonplace topics (e.g. Starfield quests or breaking news).
Also, the search limit (for the trial and basic plans) stresses me and I find myself second guessing whether I really need to search for something. I like it but I haven’t come across a “wow!” moment that makes me want to abandon DDG, despite the transparency and privacy-focus.
what transparency and "privacy focus" are you talking about?
They haven't released a single line of code and they required you to be logged in, which makes you uniquely identifiable, and if you paid using credit card, then you gave away your personal identifiable information.
datacucked
uuuuusing it
I don't mind you suggesting these, they're cool projects, but the "coMmEnTs sHiLLinG kAgI" and "mAke UsE of tHat 10$ beTteR thAn KaGi" stuff is so unnecessary. I mean just... why?
I have a bad habit of mixing personal bias into things when I get into a passionate writing fit and it sometimes comes off as pretentious dickery. I never set out to attack kagi users themselves even if I can now see now it did come across and those comments were unneeded. I was being a pretentious jerk with those comments and apologize to all you kagi users for my assholery.
I do think its a waste to spend money on a search engine, and that open source software instance maintainers could probably make use that $ better than another search engine startup. I am being honest with those personal opinions. But its not my place to judge those who decide they are in a well enough financial spot to pay $ for a service that adds precieved value to their life or where they decide to pay it to.
Its fustrating as a FOSS nerd to see so many people shill yet another subscription based service feeding money into another souless company that makes promises of protecting your data and not selling it to ad companies now but has no gaurentee of holding those promises over time. That's how the subscription services get you once they have you, slowly changing promises and creeping in their money making bs but slowly enough to not be too jarring. Maybe I'm just disillusioned with things after being burned so many times. Best of luck to you though I hope it continues to be a valuable service to those willing to pay for it.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I'm not a kagi user, but I'll put in a word for paying for services: a search engine requires time, equipment and hosting to run. Sure some kind people may be willing to run it free. But search in my opinion is an essential service. If it's not working, I want there to be someone responsible, and (in the kindest sense) obliged to get it working.
Going further, if there are new developments in the tech or new features to be implemented, I want there to be an incentive for the operator to implement them.
I don't turn to a hobbyist to give me eyeglasses or fix my car. Similarly I don't turn to an advertiser. In some cases I fix my car myself, but when something is too complex or time intensive for me to handle I'm going to pay to ensure I have that essential good or service.
I do think its a waste to spend money on a search engine
I honestly believe that it's good to pay for services if you find them good. FOSS does need the money but unless you want to wait for the long term, it's not viable as a user.
Its fustrating as a FOSS nerd to see so many people shill yet another subscription based service ...
I'm quite interested in FOSS stuff but I get disappointed by so much FOSS stuff I now just use whatever feels the best to me
Thank you! I'm intrigued by Kagi but it's a lot of money. I've tried SearXNG before it wasn't great for me, I'll try it again.
I hope you find more success with it this time. Like I said not all SearXNG instances are equal paulgo.io was the first to really click with me and give useful results. Some SearXNG instances won't query google or most other engines making their usefulness rather limited. Also the more popular an instance becomes the more likely it will be rate-limited by search engines which isn't the fault of the instance but can be an occasional annoyance for sure. Not perfect solution by any means but I think SearX would be a great fit for lots of people here who just want google results without all the spyware ad bs
Nice choice of lemmy instance, btw. Pubnixes like SDF rule!
I'm trying this instance out at the moment and it feels great! Do you know how to get the autocomplete to work on Firefox android? I'm looking for search suggestion API url but can't seem to find it.
Genuine question, what happens to SearX if google pulls the plug on API access or changes the algorithm in a way that makes it worse?
If Kagi got an actual code audit done I would be a lot more on board with it. The audit they do show appears to just be penetration testing, not focused on the code itself but I don't know much about so maybe there is more to it that I don't understand.
I wish it were easier for developers to monetize their projects while leaving them open source. Tutanota is a good example of open source code used in a paid service. With tutanota however it seems like what you pay for is the service, not the software.
I am not the most knowledgeable person on searxng innerworkings so may be wrong, but searxng instances usually use the 'get' and 'post' commands to request+fetch http/https content not an API key. You can get your own api keys/tokens from google and plug them in to searx in the preferences menu if they ever make it API only. There's a lot of IT academic research that relies on google they will most likely never pull API access fullstop but you never you I guess.
There is not much if anything SearXNG instances can do if google changes algorithm. In worst case scenario it can still index other search engines which themselves scrape google like startpage or engines completely independent like duckduckgo, bing, brave, YaCy, ect. Here is a list of all configured engines SearXNG uses by default you can go into preferences at top right of searXNG to configure what engines you want to use among other things.
It just worries me that there isn't really a google competitor if all the alternatives rely on google not screwing up a product. It seems like honest search results are becoming less of a thing they care about.
My issue with SearXNG is that I cannot natively use it on mobile (iOS). Might be a small issue for most but I need to be able to type into my browser's search bar and it utilize that search engine. Open browser > navigate to search homepage > enter query is a lot slower, especially if I am out and about and need information quickly.
If there is some way to configure this I'd love to hear about it, but Safari on iOS limits you to a handful of search engines. I use DDG today.
I did a quick search and found instructions to what I think you are asking for hopefully this helps.
The query string for paulgo.io is "https://paulgo.io/search?q="
searchengine.party also has the query string links for a multitude of different search engines, as well as a comparison of security tests and privacy policies and other functions
xSearch on the AppStore lets you use any search engine with Safari.
Hey just to update I heard XSearch works if that other thing didn't work out
When you need a scalable service for tons of users, federated isn't going to cut it. This is why Apple wants DDG. Point the bajillion crApple lusers at one of your public instances (or even all of them chosen at random each time) and watch it crash and burn overnight. DDG has tons of servers and the infrastructure to hold up while a ton of people search why their luxury device is slowing down every time Apple releases a new one.
Lol Federation is the definition of scalable. Everyone serves their local users -> a miniscule amount of global traffic, everything but auth always stays local.
Universities have been doing it since the beginning of the internet. Email is the biggest example but there are others: eduGAIN and eduroam are the most notable ones coming out of the academic community.
You are confusing a network of distinct servers with a single point of entry that a search engine would need to be. There is no fallback or distribution of search when everything is directed to a single search point, and pointing people to different search sites per search will remove any per-site preferences.
Do people think about what they say any more, or do they see someone who is trying to carefully explain their problem and just go into pure rage and try to disprove them by spewing things that do not make any sense?
No search engine has a "single point of entry". Every search engine has Cache servers all over the world at almost every major IXP. Nothing would prevent a federated service from operating the same way. Cloudflare or literally any form of loadbalancer or load balancing service could be used to redirect queries to fedisearch (or whatever the service name would be) to the local instance by IP geolocation. Authentication can just be forwarded to the home server via SAML, thats also where the settings can be stored and queried at login time by the local instance. SAML assertions are very scalable, and there needs to be no global login server, since every users login query can be forwarded to his home instance, where his profile is loaded. The full search index could be put into a blockchain that every local instance joins - every instance crawls their area and publishes new results to the chain.
You seem to know very little about how the internet works, yet you accuse me of raging.
That the foss community can manage things like that has been proven for years. Debian mirror server network works in a similar way (they run their own loadbalancer ofc), while being cryptographically secure. And if you wanna see a federated login network like i described in action, just go to https://pubs.acs.org/action/ssostart
All these parts i described are existing technology and in global use. The combination is not, but there is nothing that would prevent a foundation from implementing search like this.
I don't know what the fuck is going on with Kagi on Lemmy. They must be using bots or paying people for promoting them. I just don't get how people can trust them so much when they haven't released the code for anything, they require you to be logged in which makes the user uniquely identifiable and therefore could easily correlate your searches to your identity (even if they claim not to, it's just a "trust me, bro")
What is a kagi
Yeah it's ridiculous, seems like there's a shill army of this proprietary service here.
Saved. Thank you for your time and thoroughness!
shilling kagi
Shilling means that you're claiming people (like me) who've been recommending Kagi are in fact secretly paid to do covert advertising.
Are you using that word wrong, or do you actually believe that we're all liars?
Thanks Yacy looks promising
You're welcome updated the comment with proper links
thank you, great post
Would also recommend whoogle. They have done public ones iirc but also hand a self hosted option (that I use behind a VPN) for those that line self hosted shit
i have tried these alternate search engines and I have to always come back to google. A friend I trust a lot swears that kagi is the best search engine, and so do other people I know, so it must have some merit.
Surprised to see so many plugging kagi in this thread. A subscription to search the internet seems crazy to me. Is it that good?
It's like Google back in 2010. You find stuff you are looking for without pages and pages of ads, spam, and clickbait.
If you hit a domain which is obviously spam, you can block it forever. If you find a domain you really like, you can promote it for future results.
It's clear that Google's motivation is no longer to offer good results. It's to maximise the time you're on the site, and the number of ads and spam sites you click. Their goal is now, literally, to feed you bad results.
Every good result they serve you could have been an ad, so they're incentivised to replace as many with ads as possible.
This article is a pretty good summary of why, by Google's own words, an ad driven search experience will be rubbish:
Not only does Kagi produce great search results, as good as "old Google" IMO, its business model means the above cannot (or at least, shouldn't) happen. If it ever changed its model to include ads etc it would collapse so fast.
So for me, unlike the other poster, I'd recommend it to everyone who's finding the existing search engines are rubbish and full of useless Etsy and SEO etc links.
Pinterest links are the worst. I just don’t want that shit and images of random crap isn’t what I’m after.
I can't find any information about their search engine crawler. Isn't it standard for search engines to label their crawlers or something?
It’s conventional to do this, but a user agent string is entirely up to the client, and robots.txt is just a suggestion.
So for the best results, you probably want to mock Google’s crawler because it’s suicidal to block that if you want search traffic.
Cable companies wouldn’t insert ads, people pay for a premium experience with cable instead of getting their TV free over the air. If they did people would just cancel and watch free tv.
Then later: Streaming companies wouldn’t insert ads, the ability to watch on your time, terms and without interruption is part of the appeal, if they did their customers would leave them and they’d collapse. It would be the death of any company foolish enough to do so.
🤡
Markets and competition will save us cried the fool with no knowledge of history.
If they grow they need to keep growing, if their results are good enough they’ll introduce “limited” tracking for “trusted partners” with limited ads that are “valuable and relevant”. And from there it can spiral more but you’ve already lost.
As revenue, tracking, taking a big yearly check from Zuck or whoever to share your data with them. It’s a good source of revenue and unless this company is privately financed by one weirdo entirely out of their own pockets they have a responsibility to investors to get them ever increasing year over year returns.
Of course the typical thing to do is to get big enough first like streaming. Train the fool consumers to pay for something they’re getting for free, normalize that, grow, then sock them with ads, tracking, inconveniences and train them to accept more and more of it.
Brave words divorced from reality. 🤡
How would you estimate the likelyhood of kagi going the way you describe?
I mean I guess it could happen... so I guess why trust anyone? May as well just switch it all off!
Paying for a service ensures your incentives (mostly) align. Kagi's incentive is to make a good search that makes you want to pay for it, google's incentives are to gather your data to either sell or use themselves, and show you as many ads as possible.
I thought it sounded pretty silly, too. I gave the free trial a shot and for technical searches it was the best I had seen by far. Being able to lower certain sites and raise other sites makes it much easier to filter through shitty results like blog posts and stuff. I pay for it now and it's worth it to me just for the time savings on technical searches. It definitely is still pretty far behind for things like local business info and stuff, but as a general purpose search engine it's been extremely good for me.
Or the most annoying thing, trying to research a topic with one word matching that of a recent news event. So you only ever see news sites.
I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone because it’s really expensive, but for me it’s great, and I save at least one hour a day at work since I don’t waste my time filtering the results from DDG or Google.
It’s subjective of course but I’m happy about it so far.
I tried the trial for two days before I bought in and completely gave up google. Kagi is absolutely amazing and well worth the money, not just because there’s no ads or selling of your data, but because the search results are miles better than any alternative now. I have over 50k searches in my google history and at one point in my career I would average around a hundred searches a day. I know what I need from a search engine and Kagi absolutely gives it to me.
Yeah, I scoffed at the idea of paying. And paying $10/mo. Then I used it. And I keep using it. A lot. And now0 looks like I'm going to be paying for it for a while.
Yeah, it's very good. Not having results full of shit like geeksforgeeks or Pinterest is nice, but possible with browser extensions. Being able to influence the rank of different sites, to either bubble up or down in your results is one of the secret killer features
Doesn't Google pay billions to Apple for the top spot? Why would they want to lose that stream of free cash?
If the goodwill they garner from that makes APPL go up because it matches the privacy expectation they are branding themselves with, they might be making even more money anyway.
Exactly. They are trying to win the privacy game, so a small sacrifice now could turn to be quite profitable.
Privacy theater*
Partially, but also partially it's legit. I generally don't have much positive to say about Apple, but they make pretty things and the privacy is generally better than most.
Of course, you pay through the nose for it.
It's not privacy but exclusivity of data collection to apple
I believe they've been externally audited before, but I'm not positive.
Audited for what? And I don't think they have.
Audited for what telemetry is transmitted from an iPhone or Mac during use, what information is possible to harvest by a third party app, and whether or not purpose-made experimental data is made available to advertisers.
It looks like no official (that is, authorized by Apple) audits have been done, at least that I can see. But privacy research firms have done it, and the consensus appears to be that Apple is not great, but better than Google, Amazon, and Facebook. For what it's worth.
To harm a competitors stock prices more than they are paying out
Could be that Apple will acquire DuckDuckGo.
A little hasty to presume it I suppose, but Apple has to wonder how much money they are leaving on the table by taking Google’s payments. If Google will pay them more than $9 billion/year just to be default—what does that say about how profitable Apple’s absolutely huge and locked-in base can be?
Could apple be using the press as part of their bargaining strategy with google over the default search engine fee?
Only always
How is Apple going to monetize DuckDuckGo to make up for that $9 billion, without compromising their other efforts w/r/t user and data privacy?
How much do they monetize Apple Maps for? Sometimes companies just buy something to be a service supporting the thing they actually sell.
Rhey are going to sell ads on Apple maps.
Source?
Edit: I googled it. There is no source, basically just a guy claiming that would be logical for them to do but his timeframe is already proven wrong and Apple hasn’t announced anything.
efforts
I think the appropriate word here is marketing. There's no real privacy in an Apple device.
What data privacy?
A Washington post article I was reading yesterday said google pays apple $19 billion this year to be the default browser on iPhones.
There is a big anti trust case against Google right now and this arrangement with apple is one of the topics of interest. If Google loses they could be forced to stop paying.
Who says they're not negotiating a larger stream of cash?
With DuckDuckGo?
No, with Google. If Google pay Apple more, they might be more willing to overlook the reasons they're looking to switch.
This whole thing is just negotiation theater. Apple never intents to switch.
Yes exactly. They just want to adjust the price.
I mean, it makes sense, DDG already use apple maps for their maps platform.
I started using duck duck go a few months ago and have felt like my search results are a lot more useful since.
The maps function on it sucks though
DDG uses Apple Maps.
that explains that then
The maps it used were a lot worse, so this is a recent improvement
I wish they would use leaflet
I’ve been using it this way for years. I don’t use google products at all now and don’t miss it.
Duck duck go sucks for porn I stopped using it a while ago. Until they fix that I'm out.
The man has priorities
Bing image search is surpringly efficient for this
Isn’t it the same search index?
Or piracy
Oddly enough I used DDG once for an artist and actually got results meanwhile Google gave me irrelevant shit
I've been using duckduckgo for the last month and change and I'm not really a fan. Especially for things here in Japan, it can give really wonky results (today I was looking for the closest post office and searched '\ post office'. It gave me a website to get directions, but no indication of where it might be nor, y'know, even the post office's website). Google has gotten continually worse for me, but this was, in most cases, just barely as good or worse.
It's been my default for years. Usually I find what I want. When I don't, I go back to the search box and put !g at the front, which sends the search to google.
!sp (Startpage) gives you the same results as Google but without personalized ads or ad tracking.
!s is actually enough
Thanks both! Will try to remember this for next time.
To confirm, are you also toggling the Japan region for searches?
I didn't notice that was a thing, but it defaulted to Japan so we're safe there.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Oct 4 (Reuters) - Apple (AAPL.O) held talks with DuckDuckGo to replace Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google as the default search engine for the private mode on Apple's Safari browser, the Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the discussions.
The details of the talks are expected to be released later this week, according to the report, after Judge Amit Mehta, overseeing a federal antitrust suit against Google, ruled on Wednesday that he would unseal the testimony of DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg and Apple executive John Giannandrea.
Apple, DuckDuckGo and Google did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice in a landmark U.S. trial argued Google, which has some 90% of the search market, illegally paid $10 billion annually to smartphone makers such as Apple and wireless carriers like AT&T (T.N) and others to be the default in search on their devices in order to stay on top.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified on Monday, saying that tech giants were competing for vast troves of content needed to train artificial intelligence, and complained Google was locking up content with expensive and exclusive deals with publishers.
He added that Microsoft had sought to make its Bing search engine the default on Apple smartphones but was rebuffed.
The original article contains 241 words, the summary contains 214 words. Saved 11%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Duck duck go needs a lot of work to replace Google search.
I've used it for years but often I still get the shits and just bring Google up after duck duck go fails to find what I'm looking for.
Huh I'm also a regular DDG user but I never have that experience.
For 9 of 10 search DDG give me what I'm looking for in the top results, for the other time I just add g! to the search and its sends me to google.
For me the direct opposite is true. About two years ago Google stopped giving me any accurate results, feeding me a bunch of semi-related garbage instead. DuckDuckGo feels like the Google of old: results that actually (literally) contain the terms of the query and not much else. I'd hate using the internet without it.
I felt the same way. Lately, though, ddg has been serving unrelated garbage ads in the middle of my searches. I am now looking for something new. Startpage has some decent results so far....
Yeah, have had a similar experience. I find the more specific or niche a question is, the better google is at finding relevant pages. DDG is perfectly fine the rest of the time, though, so I keep it as the default.
I usually forget I'm using it. Exception is for work - I frequently have to specify g! to get Stackoverflow results to show up at the top.
The android app is nice, especially the app tracking blocker. It takes up the VPN connection tho
On Safari (iOS), Apple makes it easy to switch. Settings > Safari > Search Engine and select which one you want. I’ve been using DDG not quite a year and at first the change felt a lil jarring, but knowing I’m contributing less to Google’s ad revenue and their long list of privacy violations, I’m comfortable now sticking with DDG. Change isn’t always easy, convenient, or comfortable, but it can be done with just the tiniest bit of effort.
All browsers make it easy. In fact, Chrome on Android is quicker.
Settings > Search Engine > and select which one you want.
Currently you can pick between;
Google
Yahoo
Bing
DuckDuckGo
Ecosia
That's not the point at all.
The point is MOST users don't change it or even know how. I seriously doubt anyone in my family would even know that it is possible, know that there are other search engines, or that Google knowing everything about their searches is not a good thing. And yes they all use Facebook too.🤦♂️
I think the tech community should come to the realization that most people (no, not in your immediate circle which is mostly tech) don't want choice; they want ease of use, which means guidance.
Why would a person, who can't differentiate between google, a web browser, an app, or even the internet, want to change their device settings on their own which requires 10 clicks when their experience can be configured by zero clicks by a mega corp? This is a systemic issue in our society and needs to be corrected at school level in some sort of "Social media awareness/IT class".
I agree completely. The biggest issue is it requires critical thinking which is unfortunately not a common skill. Maybe this is one of the first things that needs correcting.
I would imagine you can add your own in as well, the same as Firefox allows.
Yeah, it's easy. I recently changed to Kagi. Just had to do a search using Kagi first, then open settings and it was there.
That's a bit more difficult. It doesn't allow you to manually type in the address so you need to keep visiting it until Google recognizes that it's a search engine.
this is a very poor argument. every browser I've used, even Chrome, makes it easy to change the default search engine in the settings.
Were they making an argument?
I wasn’t making any argument, merely offering advice how to change something and my experience in doing so. But my comment clearly upset a lot of Chrome users because I mentioned Google not respecting your privacy, which is a given for a lot of companies.
As I understood it, they were implying that Apple's default is Google but they still care about privacy because they make it easy to switch to Duckduckgo.
I pointed out that this has been an essential feature in web browsers for years.
I wouldn't agree with that being the correct interpretation, just so you know.
Did DDG move away from consolidating results from Google and other engines?
Bing now
I tried to switch to DDG as my default search on iOS but my adblocker doesn’t block ads on it but it does on google, so I switched back
DDG has a built-in option to determine whether you want to see ads or not.
You can turn off ads directly in DDG settings
I tried to switch but the results were terrible. I ended up on bing which is still inferior to google but better than being google even if it is another behemoth data gathering company. At this point im just trying to stop centralizing who gets all my data don’t lest it’s a bit fragmented.
ddg gets its results from bing, I'd recommend startpage if you want google results while being privacy respecting.
DDG doesn't solely use Bing, though. From what I understand, it uses Bing + it's own crawler and algorithm so its results are almost always different than vanilla Bing.
Duck duck go is crap these days, probably since it uses Bing. All I ever get are "7 best ways to..." click bait, probably AI generated "articles".
I've been trying to use DDG but honestly it sucks. I can't imagine Apple switching to it, it would just make things worse for users, who commonly can't figure out how to switch defaults. I think it's just a negotiating point.
Google search has been fundamentally broken for at least two years. When the protests started on Reddit 90% of Google's search results we're broken.
I found this too. After the reddit fiasco, I found DDG to have no downside. The search syntax is a little different (google's is better) but the outputs arent radically different.
What difficulties are you finding with it and are you switching from Google? The results are as custom as Google given they haven't scraped your life history so wondering if that's it? I've been using DDG without any issues. About once every 6 months I struggle to find something so try the Google bang but have never found better results. In fact, I was shocked last time how crap the Google results were, just full of AI generated crap and SEO based crap.
To be honest, DDG is also struggling with that now as it's based on Bing. I have been trying a public searxg but not found it very good so far.
I love DDG and use it as my default, but there's no doubt that its index is shallower and its semantic matching can't compare to Google's. I'm a biogeochemist and spend a lot of time coding in R. Google is just better at surfacing rare science articles/blogs and stackoverflow pages where my query doesn't match exactly, but it is a relevant result. I use DDG for my personal searching and Google for professional searching
Try Kagi. You may love it like I did.
Hell no. Paying for something that's the same as ddg. That's a terrible idea, and the results aren't any better, despite how much their marketing claims it to be and that smaller blogs show up more.
I guess you get what you pay for then lol
In this case you actually get more for free. Not to mention the paid service is a privacy nightmare since all of the searched are done through a logged in user. Which also means it's incompatible with private browsing. But their marketing says "trust me bro", while they're selling you an overrated product. DDG even simply through a VPN is a million times more private then any logged in service. You need to assume if something is trackable, it will be tracked. Don't follow marketing blindly.
Results suck, it can't find anything. I really don't think it's related to lack of browsing history.
what do you search? i always find everything at first time
Not the same person, but DDG results just seem a little bit shittier than Google's results. It's nothing I can specifically put my finger on, outside of "I'm having more issues finding an answer for my query".
I also hate the basic layout of the page, but that's not a DDG problem as such, just a personal opinion.
I use DDG exclusively now, but I will say, despite the downvotes from these annoying ass FOSS users, DDG is worse.
If I am having some very specific issue with my computer, I will be page 5 on DDG without an answer, but Google will have one page 1.
Also Google Images is light years ahead DDG.
It took a long time to adjust to DDG, but now I am fine with it.
If I am having some very specific issue with my computer, I will be page 5 on DDG without an answer, but Google will have one page 1.
This has always been my number one issue, too. I'm in IT and still struggle to use DDG (and Bing, tbf) for technical issues. The results are either only vaguely related to what I'm searching for, outdated as shit, or completely irrelevant. Automotive stuff is the same. I can be ass deep in DDG results and just be getting shit on top of shit. It's frustrating, because I want to love DDG but it makes it so hard for my general use-case.
Just use ddg syntax operators and stuff will improve
While that is true, you shouldn't need to do that. The site should just work properly without diving into the advanced stuff. It's also WAY more annoying to use on mobile.
That didn't stop them from plowing ahead with Apple Maps, even though its debut was total garbage.
Debut and still is garbage.
There's a reason why Apple users have both installed.
Does Apple Maps even have reviews?
Anyone who thinks Apple Maps is garbage isn’t comparing A/B with Google Maps regularly. At least not in the areas I drive.
Door Dash defaults to Google Maps for directions, and when I Dash and use Google the routing is always poor and seemingly unaware of construction, road blocks, and traffic jams. It also sometimes asks me to make turns in places that aren’t streets and recommends U Turns where they are illegal. I’ve encountered none of that with Apple Maps.
Sometimes I’m too lazy to copy and paste an address into Google maps, and use Apple Maps. Every time I regret it. And exactly the opposite of what you said apple fails to see road closures and detours. While missing so many other things google has had for 15 years.
Apple tried to get me to turn into a dead-end, concrete wall once. Never used it again. But that was years ago, so if they’ve improved that’s great to hear! Google Maps plays this game where it tries to act as traffic control. It’ll only show options for paths I know to be super crappy to take at certain times of day, but won’t show an alternate (not so secret) path I KNOW to be better. I’ll start heading the alternate way and lo and behold, it cuts off 5 mins or whatever from the ETA. So stupid.
Don't agree.
I switched from Google quite recently, as I knew it was hard...
But now I'm mostly not using !g unless for few cache: searches or when I want use few features (sport results, without going to specific websites).
You've to use some search syntax items more as + but otherwise it's quite good and clear to read.
They should make a deal with Kagi if they had any brains.
Even though im not sure if Kagi could take that amount of traffic right away.
They should make a deal with Kagi if they had any brains.
Oh, okay
Lists critical reason why using Kagi would actually be a really dumb move
lol
Vote for Brave search.
Surprised they dont buy kagi tbh
Thank fuck they didn't
What's a kagi
It’s a search engine with better results than google https://kagi.com
But it's not free. Pretty important point for a lot of people.
Yeah funny no one is mentioning the cost. It's wildly expensive.
What would you say a good price is ?
The lowest tier should be about $20/yr. I'd pay that. The family unlimited $60/yr. I'd pay that for my wife and kids to have it too.
How's it better than Google? Google is the king of data, idk how this competes with that
Google monetizes the search experience. It’s gotten steadily worse at its primary function for the last 15 years. Eventually, a better search engine will exist, it just takes time for Google to enshittify theirs enough.
Meh, I use adblocker and ghostery. The impact on my results is minimal if anything
K
Is ddg any good?
I feel like Bing would just be better at this point.
DDG is great, highly recommended. It reminds me of what Google used to be.
It's garbage outside of the US for local results. Bing is somewhat better, but still not good enough. In the US though, plenty of good alternatives to Google search
DDG is only garbage for not personalised search results.
Which is kind of the point in a privacy driven search engine.
DDG literally has a search filter to search only websites belonging to a certain country.
Sincerely, a Belgian DDG user who has been using it exclusively for the last 6 years.
I'm outside the US and I've been using DDG exclusively on every device for about 5 years now. It's excellent.
No problems in the UK
I'm outside US (Philippines), most searches are local as long as your country is set on DDG settings. I've been using DDG since 2021 and it's refreshing that I actually searching with my actual query, instead of "click the first, random result" and call it a day.
I honestly might have to look into it then. Google is still pretty decent got me but I’m just finding myself either using Reddit to find an answer or asking chat gpt (purely excel related questions)
I’ve had DDG as my default search engine on my iPhone ever since AMP pages became annoying. I have to use Google about once a month. Otherwise DDG is pretty good.
It does show you more relevant results based on your query, withou doing any guessing about what you might have meant by it.
That being said, sometimes I use Google to search for something when DDG is giving me bad results.
But overall I would recommend, it's muxh more better experience with the results I am seeing.
I have tried Bing for a while as well, but it was thinking too much instead of just showing me the results.
The only reason I had to use Google was to search by image. Which is a feature DDG doesn't have sadly.
For specific search, I found perplexity.ai to be much better and faster, it uses AI to scan the websites and give summaries as to why they are relevant to your query.
I find that when I’m looking for very specific things Google is still king but DDG is much better for broad strokes.
I'd say the opposite: ddg can get me what I want, if I know exactly what I want. If I'm just vaguely guessing, ddg us as good as my guess, while Google tries to guess with me and it works out sometimes.
yep it is quite good
Ddg is Bing with less tracking. I mean, literally it is Bing.
After 2 years of exclusive use: yes. It's just as good if not better. Google is filled with ads and Bing just sucks.
DDG is bing.
*modified bing
Bing does potentially have slightly worse results, what with the "personalized" (tracking-based, ad/promoted) results. But yeah.
I just switched from ddg (after years of using it across all my devices) to kagi, but ddg is good. The results can be iffy at times, especially on unusual or niche queries, but their bang system lets you forward the query to other engines to see if they have the result you are looking for. In my household where I control and direct the tech, ddg has been the standard for many years for all our devices. I recommend it to everyone who is still using a big-name search engine.
Kagi is fucking amazing.
I've used it for a few months, and in the end I was always using !g
It's just not good enough in a lot of contexts. I'm having a much better time with kagi
It’s okay. If you want something genuinely as good as Google, if not better, Kagi is what you want.
I have been using it exclusively for years. Does its job most of the time and when it doesn't and I include Google results (via bang !g) Google doesn't really find it either.
However, I've opted out of most Google services in parallel, so their model of me probably isn't the best anymore. If in their bubble, their results may still be better (creeps me out though, so I live with non-perfect search).
Ddg results are pretty horrible in my experience. Statpage (google results) and brave search both have better results.
Brave Search is awful for non-English results. Startpage is decent but only because it's basically Google results.
I can't speak to non-English results, and I agree Startpage is just a Google proxy.
Shout out to startpage! I use it almost exclusively and it is great.
Yeah, brave search is what I use for my main searches, but ddg bangs do come in useful. Brave has it too.
Bangs are essential, especially if you use DDG HTML, which doesnt have tabs for different kinds of searches
Upvote this question, it's pretty relevant to the issue of whether this would have been good for Apple (no, it would not have been)
DDG is my default search on mobile, but half the time I end up back on Google. Google is better at guessing exactly what I want and giving that content fast, such as the weather, people always ask answers, or quick facts about things that saves me from loading the site underneath the result.
But sometimes I know exactly what I want and Google won't give it to me - because it decided I want something else.
That's where a well built query can work better on DDG. However... DDG is more susceptible to backlink spamming and old school SEO techniques to rank content near the top. So depending on the people behind the search results, some queries are fine and some can still be garbage.
Also for image and video search Google is top.
Strong disagree on Google having a better video/image search. Bing is top there, then Google, then DDG, imo.
This is a copy/pasted message I wrote up on another thread. As long as there are people in the comments shilling kagi, I will shill my prefered engines. At least my suggestions will bring awareness to free as in freedom projects. I hope to god people paying 10$/month just to not get datacucked by search engines will also learn something and save their money.
SearX/SearXNG is a free and open source, highly customizable, and self-hostable meta search engine. SearX instances act as a middle man, they query other search engines for you, stripping all their spyware ad crap and never having your connection touch their servers. Of course you have to trust the SearX instance host with your query information, but again if you are that paranoid just self host.
I personally trust some foss loving sysadmin that host social services for free out of alturism, who also accepts hosting donations, whos server is located on the other side of the planet, with my query info over Google/Alphabet any day.
Its nice to be able to email and have a human conversation with your search engine provider thats just a knowlegable every day joe who genuinely believes in the project and freely dedicates their resources to it. Consider sending some cash their way to help with upkeep if you like the services they provide, they will probably appreciate and make use of that 10$ better than kagi.
Heres a list of all public searx instances, I personally prefer to use paulgo.io All SearX instances are configured different to index different engines. If one doesn't seem to give good results try a few others.
Did I mention it has bangs like duckduckgo? If you really need google like for maps and buisness info just use !!g in the query
search.marginalia.nu is a completely novel search engine written and hosted by one dude that aims to prioritize indexing lighter websites little to no javascript as these tend to be personal websites and homepages that have poor SEO and the big search engines won't index well. If you remember the internet of the early 2000s and want a nostalgia trip this ones for you. Its also open source and self-hostable
Finally, YaCy is another completely novel search engine that uses peer-to-peer technology to power a big webcrawler which prioritizes indexes based off user queries and feedback. Everyone can download yacy and devote a bit of their computing power to both run their own local instance and help out a collective search engine. Companies can also download yacy and use it to index their private intranets.
They have a public instance available through a web portal. To be upfront, YaCy is not a great search engine for what most people usually want, which is quick and relevant information within the first few clicks. But, it is an interesting use of technology and what a true honest-to-god community-operated search engine looks like untainted by SEO scores or corporate money-making shenanigans.
I hope this has been informative to those who believe theres only a few options to pick from, I know these options are so unknown to most people.
Thank you! So I can use Google but stop it from doing the CAPCHA shit repeatedly because it detects my VPN? It's abuse of the user and I'm tired of it.
Yup! Enjoy :)
I rage quit Google search the other day over that damn captcha
I'm trying Startpage until I get those alternatives down
I'm sure that's what Google wants. You can either give them your data or you can go somewhere else, but hopefully you choose to give them your data because they make it too inconvenient not to.
Abuse of the user 🤣
I use Kagi right now but search.marginalia.nu and YaCy seem really cool. Hell, I might package YaCy and write a module for it for NixOS :^)
I’m trying Kagi now but I’m having mixed feelings. Search results are mixed at best for some pretty commonplace topics (e.g. Starfield quests or breaking news).
Also, the search limit (for the trial and basic plans) stresses me and I find myself second guessing whether I really need to search for something. I like it but I haven’t come across a “wow!” moment that makes me want to abandon DDG, despite the transparency and privacy-focus.
what transparency and "privacy focus" are you talking about?
They haven't released a single line of code and they required you to be logged in, which makes you uniquely identifiable, and if you paid using credit card, then you gave away your personal identifiable information.
uuuuusing it
I don't mind you suggesting these, they're cool projects, but the "coMmEnTs sHiLLinG kAgI" and "mAke UsE of tHat 10$ beTteR thAn KaGi" stuff is so unnecessary. I mean just... why?
I have a bad habit of mixing personal bias into things when I get into a passionate writing fit and it sometimes comes off as pretentious dickery. I never set out to attack kagi users themselves even if I can now see now it did come across and those comments were unneeded. I was being a pretentious jerk with those comments and apologize to all you kagi users for my assholery.
I do think its a waste to spend money on a search engine, and that open source software instance maintainers could probably make use that $ better than another search engine startup. I am being honest with those personal opinions. But its not my place to judge those who decide they are in a well enough financial spot to pay $ for a service that adds precieved value to their life or where they decide to pay it to.
Its fustrating as a FOSS nerd to see so many people shill yet another subscription based service feeding money into another souless company that makes promises of protecting your data and not selling it to ad companies now but has no gaurentee of holding those promises over time. That's how the subscription services get you once they have you, slowly changing promises and creeping in their money making bs but slowly enough to not be too jarring. Maybe I'm just disillusioned with things after being burned so many times. Best of luck to you though I hope it continues to be a valuable service to those willing to pay for it.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I'm not a kagi user, but I'll put in a word for paying for services: a search engine requires time, equipment and hosting to run. Sure some kind people may be willing to run it free. But search in my opinion is an essential service. If it's not working, I want there to be someone responsible, and (in the kindest sense) obliged to get it working.
Going further, if there are new developments in the tech or new features to be implemented, I want there to be an incentive for the operator to implement them.
I don't turn to a hobbyist to give me eyeglasses or fix my car. Similarly I don't turn to an advertiser. In some cases I fix my car myself, but when something is too complex or time intensive for me to handle I'm going to pay to ensure I have that essential good or service.
I honestly believe that it's good to pay for services if you find them good. FOSS does need the money but unless you want to wait for the long term, it's not viable as a user.
I'm quite interested in FOSS stuff but I get disappointed by so much FOSS stuff I now just use whatever feels the best to me
Thank you! I'm intrigued by Kagi but it's a lot of money. I've tried SearXNG before it wasn't great for me, I'll try it again.
I hope you find more success with it this time. Like I said not all SearXNG instances are equal paulgo.io was the first to really click with me and give useful results. Some SearXNG instances won't query google or most other engines making their usefulness rather limited. Also the more popular an instance becomes the more likely it will be rate-limited by search engines which isn't the fault of the instance but can be an occasional annoyance for sure. Not perfect solution by any means but I think SearX would be a great fit for lots of people here who just want google results without all the spyware ad bs
Nice choice of lemmy instance, btw. Pubnixes like SDF rule!
I'm trying this instance out at the moment and it feels great! Do you know how to get the autocomplete to work on Firefox android? I'm looking for search suggestion API url but can't seem to find it.
Genuine question, what happens to SearX if google pulls the plug on API access or changes the algorithm in a way that makes it worse?
If Kagi got an actual code audit done I would be a lot more on board with it. The audit they do show appears to just be penetration testing, not focused on the code itself but I don't know much about so maybe there is more to it that I don't understand.
I wish it were easier for developers to monetize their projects while leaving them open source. Tutanota is a good example of open source code used in a paid service. With tutanota however it seems like what you pay for is the service, not the software.
I am not the most knowledgeable person on searxng innerworkings so may be wrong, but searxng instances usually use the 'get' and 'post' commands to request+fetch http/https content not an API key. You can get your own api keys/tokens from google and plug them in to searx in the preferences menu if they ever make it API only. There's a lot of IT academic research that relies on google they will most likely never pull API access fullstop but you never you I guess.
There is not much if anything SearXNG instances can do if google changes algorithm. In worst case scenario it can still index other search engines which themselves scrape google like startpage or engines completely independent like duckduckgo, bing, brave, YaCy, ect. Here is a list of all configured engines SearXNG uses by default you can go into preferences at top right of searXNG to configure what engines you want to use among other things.
It just worries me that there isn't really a google competitor if all the alternatives rely on google not screwing up a product. It seems like honest search results are becoming less of a thing they care about.
My issue with SearXNG is that I cannot natively use it on mobile (iOS). Might be a small issue for most but I need to be able to type into my browser's search bar and it utilize that search engine. Open browser > navigate to search homepage > enter query is a lot slower, especially if I am out and about and need information quickly.
If there is some way to configure this I'd love to hear about it, but Safari on iOS limits you to a handful of search engines. I use DDG today.
I did a quick search and found instructions to what I think you are asking for hopefully this helps. The query string for paulgo.io is "https://paulgo.io/search?q="
I have also heard Xsearch works
searchengine.party also has the query string links for a multitude of different search engines, as well as a comparison of security tests and privacy policies and other functions
xSearch on the AppStore lets you use any search engine with Safari.
Hey just to update I heard XSearch works if that other thing didn't work out
When you need a scalable service for tons of users, federated isn't going to cut it. This is why Apple wants DDG. Point the bajillion crApple lusers at one of your public instances (or even all of them chosen at random each time) and watch it crash and burn overnight. DDG has tons of servers and the infrastructure to hold up while a ton of people search why their luxury device is slowing down every time Apple releases a new one.
Lol Federation is the definition of scalable. Everyone serves their local users -> a miniscule amount of global traffic, everything but auth always stays local.
Universities have been doing it since the beginning of the internet. Email is the biggest example but there are others: eduGAIN and eduroam are the most notable ones coming out of the academic community.
You are confusing a network of distinct servers with a single point of entry that a search engine would need to be. There is no fallback or distribution of search when everything is directed to a single search point, and pointing people to different search sites per search will remove any per-site preferences.
Do people think about what they say any more, or do they see someone who is trying to carefully explain their problem and just go into pure rage and try to disprove them by spewing things that do not make any sense?
No search engine has a "single point of entry". Every search engine has Cache servers all over the world at almost every major IXP. Nothing would prevent a federated service from operating the same way. Cloudflare or literally any form of loadbalancer or load balancing service could be used to redirect queries to fedisearch (or whatever the service name would be) to the local instance by IP geolocation. Authentication can just be forwarded to the home server via SAML, thats also where the settings can be stored and queried at login time by the local instance. SAML assertions are very scalable, and there needs to be no global login server, since every users login query can be forwarded to his home instance, where his profile is loaded. The full search index could be put into a blockchain that every local instance joins - every instance crawls their area and publishes new results to the chain. You seem to know very little about how the internet works, yet you accuse me of raging.
That the foss community can manage things like that has been proven for years. Debian mirror server network works in a similar way (they run their own loadbalancer ofc), while being cryptographically secure. And if you wanna see a federated login network like i described in action, just go to https://pubs.acs.org/action/ssostart
All these parts i described are existing technology and in global use. The combination is not, but there is nothing that would prevent a foundation from implementing search like this.
I don't know what the fuck is going on with Kagi on Lemmy. They must be using bots or paying people for promoting them. I just don't get how people can trust them so much when they haven't released the code for anything, they require you to be logged in which makes the user uniquely identifiable and therefore could easily correlate your searches to your identity (even if they claim not to, it's just a "trust me, bro")
What is a kagi
Yeah it's ridiculous, seems like there's a shill army of this proprietary service here.
Saved. Thank you for your time and thoroughness!
Shilling means that you're claiming people (like me) who've been recommending Kagi are in fact secretly paid to do covert advertising.
Are you using that word wrong, or do you actually believe that we're all liars?
Thanks Yacy looks promising
You're welcome updated the comment with proper links
thank you, great post
Would also recommend whoogle. They have done public ones iirc but also hand a self hosted option (that I use behind a VPN) for those that line self hosted shit
i have tried these alternate search engines and I have to always come back to google. A friend I trust a lot swears that kagi is the best search engine, and so do other people I know, so it must have some merit.
Surprised to see so many plugging kagi in this thread. A subscription to search the internet seems crazy to me. Is it that good?
It's like Google back in 2010. You find stuff you are looking for without pages and pages of ads, spam, and clickbait.
If you hit a domain which is obviously spam, you can block it forever. If you find a domain you really like, you can promote it for future results.
It's clear that Google's motivation is no longer to offer good results. It's to maximise the time you're on the site, and the number of ads and spam sites you click. Their goal is now, literally, to feed you bad results.
Every good result they serve you could have been an ad, so they're incentivised to replace as many with ads as possible.
This article is a pretty good summary of why, by Google's own words, an ad driven search experience will be rubbish:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics
Not only does Kagi produce great search results, as good as "old Google" IMO, its business model means the above cannot (or at least, shouldn't) happen. If it ever changed its model to include ads etc it would collapse so fast.
So for me, unlike the other poster, I'd recommend it to everyone who's finding the existing search engines are rubbish and full of useless Etsy and SEO etc links.
Pinterest links are the worst. I just don’t want that shit and images of random crap isn’t what I’m after.
I can't find any information about their search engine crawler. Isn't it standard for search engines to label their crawlers or something?
It’s conventional to do this, but a user agent string is entirely up to the client, and robots.txt is just a suggestion.
So for the best results, you probably want to mock Google’s crawler because it’s suicidal to block that if you want search traffic.
https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-sources.html
Brave words divorced from reality.
Cable companies wouldn’t insert ads, people pay for a premium experience with cable instead of getting their TV free over the air. If they did people would just cancel and watch free tv.
Then later: Streaming companies wouldn’t insert ads, the ability to watch on your time, terms and without interruption is part of the appeal, if they did their customers would leave them and they’d collapse. It would be the death of any company foolish enough to do so.
🤡
Markets and competition will save us cried the fool with no knowledge of history.
If they grow they need to keep growing, if their results are good enough they’ll introduce “limited” tracking for “trusted partners” with limited ads that are “valuable and relevant”. And from there it can spiral more but you’ve already lost.
As revenue, tracking, taking a big yearly check from Zuck or whoever to share your data with them. It’s a good source of revenue and unless this company is privately financed by one weirdo entirely out of their own pockets they have a responsibility to investors to get them ever increasing year over year returns.
Of course the typical thing to do is to get big enough first like streaming. Train the fool consumers to pay for something they’re getting for free, normalize that, grow, then sock them with ads, tracking, inconveniences and train them to accept more and more of it.
How would you estimate the likelyhood of kagi going the way you describe?
I mean I guess it could happen... so I guess why trust anyone? May as well just switch it all off!
Paying for a service ensures your incentives (mostly) align. Kagi's incentive is to make a good search that makes you want to pay for it, google's incentives are to gather your data to either sell or use themselves, and show you as many ads as possible.
I thought it sounded pretty silly, too. I gave the free trial a shot and for technical searches it was the best I had seen by far. Being able to lower certain sites and raise other sites makes it much easier to filter through shitty results like blog posts and stuff. I pay for it now and it's worth it to me just for the time savings on technical searches. It definitely is still pretty far behind for things like local business info and stuff, but as a general purpose search engine it's been extremely good for me.
Or the most annoying thing, trying to research a topic with one word matching that of a recent news event. So you only ever see news sites.
I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone because it’s really expensive, but for me it’s great, and I save at least one hour a day at work since I don’t waste my time filtering the results from DDG or Google.
It’s subjective of course but I’m happy about it so far.
I tried the trial for two days before I bought in and completely gave up google. Kagi is absolutely amazing and well worth the money, not just because there’s no ads or selling of your data, but because the search results are miles better than any alternative now. I have over 50k searches in my google history and at one point in my career I would average around a hundred searches a day. I know what I need from a search engine and Kagi absolutely gives it to me.
Yeah, I scoffed at the idea of paying. And paying $10/mo. Then I used it. And I keep using it. A lot. And now0 looks like I'm going to be paying for it for a while.
Yeah, it's very good. Not having results full of shit like geeksforgeeks or Pinterest is nice, but possible with browser extensions. Being able to influence the rank of different sites, to either bubble up or down in your results is one of the secret killer features
Doesn't Google pay billions to Apple for the top spot? Why would they want to lose that stream of free cash?
If the goodwill they garner from that makes APPL go up because it matches the privacy expectation they are branding themselves with, they might be making even more money anyway.
Exactly. They are trying to win the privacy game, so a small sacrifice now could turn to be quite profitable.
Privacy theater*
Partially, but also partially it's legit. I generally don't have much positive to say about Apple, but they make pretty things and the privacy is generally better than most.
Of course, you pay through the nose for it.
It's not privacy but exclusivity of data collection to apple
I believe they've been externally audited before, but I'm not positive.
Audited for what? And I don't think they have.
Audited for what telemetry is transmitted from an iPhone or Mac during use, what information is possible to harvest by a third party app, and whether or not purpose-made experimental data is made available to advertisers.
It looks like no official (that is, authorized by Apple) audits have been done, at least that I can see. But privacy research firms have done it, and the consensus appears to be that Apple is not great, but better than Google, Amazon, and Facebook. For what it's worth.
To harm a competitors stock prices more than they are paying out
Could be that Apple will acquire DuckDuckGo. A little hasty to presume it I suppose, but Apple has to wonder how much money they are leaving on the table by taking Google’s payments. If Google will pay them more than $9 billion/year just to be default—what does that say about how profitable Apple’s absolutely huge and locked-in base can be?
Could apple be using the press as part of their bargaining strategy with google over the default search engine fee?
Only always
How is Apple going to monetize DuckDuckGo to make up for that $9 billion, without compromising their other efforts w/r/t user and data privacy?
How much do they monetize Apple Maps for? Sometimes companies just buy something to be a service supporting the thing they actually sell.
Rhey are going to sell ads on Apple maps.
Source?
Edit: I googled it. There is no source, basically just a guy claiming that would be logical for them to do but his timeframe is already proven wrong and Apple hasn’t announced anything.
I think the appropriate word here is marketing. There's no real privacy in an Apple device.
What data privacy?
A Washington post article I was reading yesterday said google pays apple $19 billion this year to be the default browser on iPhones.
There is a big anti trust case against Google right now and this arrangement with apple is one of the topics of interest. If Google loses they could be forced to stop paying.
Who says they're not negotiating a larger stream of cash?
With DuckDuckGo?
No, with Google. If Google pay Apple more, they might be more willing to overlook the reasons they're looking to switch.
This whole thing is just negotiation theater. Apple never intents to switch.
Yes exactly. They just want to adjust the price.
I mean, it makes sense, DDG already use apple maps for their maps platform.
I started using duck duck go a few months ago and have felt like my search results are a lot more useful since.
The maps function on it sucks though
DDG uses Apple Maps.
that explains that then
The maps it used were a lot worse, so this is a recent improvement
I wish they would use leaflet
I’ve been using it this way for years. I don’t use google products at all now and don’t miss it.
Duck duck go sucks for porn I stopped using it a while ago. Until they fix that I'm out.
The man has priorities
Bing image search is surpringly efficient for this
Isn’t it the same search index?
Or piracy
Oddly enough I used DDG once for an artist and actually got results meanwhile Google gave me irrelevant shit
I've been using duckduckgo for the last month and change and I'm not really a fan. Especially for things here in Japan, it can give really wonky results (today I was looking for the closest post office and searched '\ post office'. It gave me a website to get directions, but no indication of where it might be nor, y'know, even the post office's website). Google has gotten continually worse for me, but this was, in most cases, just barely as good or worse.
It's been my default for years. Usually I find what I want. When I don't, I go back to the search box and put !g at the front, which sends the search to google.
!sp (Startpage) gives you the same results as Google but without personalized ads or ad tracking.
!s is actually enough
Thanks both! Will try to remember this for next time.
To confirm, are you also toggling the Japan region for searches?
I didn't notice that was a thing, but it defaulted to Japan so we're safe there.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Oct 4 (Reuters) - Apple (AAPL.O) held talks with DuckDuckGo to replace Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google as the default search engine for the private mode on Apple's Safari browser, the Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the discussions.
The details of the talks are expected to be released later this week, according to the report, after Judge Amit Mehta, overseeing a federal antitrust suit against Google, ruled on Wednesday that he would unseal the testimony of DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg and Apple executive John Giannandrea.
Apple, DuckDuckGo and Google did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice in a landmark U.S. trial argued Google, which has some 90% of the search market, illegally paid $10 billion annually to smartphone makers such as Apple and wireless carriers like AT&T (T.N) and others to be the default in search on their devices in order to stay on top.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified on Monday, saying that tech giants were competing for vast troves of content needed to train artificial intelligence, and complained Google was locking up content with expensive and exclusive deals with publishers.
He added that Microsoft had sought to make its Bing search engine the default on Apple smartphones but was rebuffed.
The original article contains 241 words, the summary contains 214 words. Saved 11%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Duck duck go needs a lot of work to replace Google search.
I've used it for years but often I still get the shits and just bring Google up after duck duck go fails to find what I'm looking for.
Huh I'm also a regular DDG user but I never have that experience.
For 9 of 10 search DDG give me what I'm looking for in the top results, for the other time I just add g! to the search and its sends me to google.
For me the direct opposite is true. About two years ago Google stopped giving me any accurate results, feeding me a bunch of semi-related garbage instead. DuckDuckGo feels like the Google of old: results that actually (literally) contain the terms of the query and not much else. I'd hate using the internet without it.
I felt the same way. Lately, though, ddg has been serving unrelated garbage ads in the middle of my searches. I am now looking for something new. Startpage has some decent results so far....
Yeah, have had a similar experience. I find the more specific or niche a question is, the better google is at finding relevant pages. DDG is perfectly fine the rest of the time, though, so I keep it as the default.
I usually forget I'm using it. Exception is for work - I frequently have to specify
g!to get Stackoverflow results to show up at the top.The android app is nice, especially the app tracking blocker. It takes up the VPN connection tho
On Safari (iOS), Apple makes it easy to switch. Settings > Safari > Search Engine and select which one you want. I’ve been using DDG not quite a year and at first the change felt a lil jarring, but knowing I’m contributing less to Google’s ad revenue and their long list of privacy violations, I’m comfortable now sticking with DDG. Change isn’t always easy, convenient, or comfortable, but it can be done with just the tiniest bit of effort.
All browsers make it easy. In fact, Chrome on Android is quicker.
Settings > Search Engine > and select which one you want.
Currently you can pick between;
That's not the point at all.
The point is MOST users don't change it or even know how. I seriously doubt anyone in my family would even know that it is possible, know that there are other search engines, or that Google knowing everything about their searches is not a good thing. And yes they all use Facebook too.🤦♂️
I think the tech community should come to the realization that most people (no, not in your immediate circle which is mostly tech) don't want choice; they want ease of use, which means guidance.
Why would a person, who can't differentiate between google, a web browser, an app, or even the internet, want to change their device settings on their own which requires 10 clicks when their experience can be configured by zero clicks by a mega corp? This is a systemic issue in our society and needs to be corrected at school level in some sort of "Social media awareness/IT class".
I agree completely. The biggest issue is it requires critical thinking which is unfortunately not a common skill. Maybe this is one of the first things that needs correcting.
I would imagine you can add your own in as well, the same as Firefox allows.
Yeah, it's easy. I recently changed to Kagi. Just had to do a search using Kagi first, then open settings and it was there.
That's a bit more difficult. It doesn't allow you to manually type in the address so you need to keep visiting it until Google recognizes that it's a search engine.
this is a very poor argument. every browser I've used, even Chrome, makes it easy to change the default search engine in the settings.
Were they making an argument?
I wasn’t making any argument, merely offering advice how to change something and my experience in doing so. But my comment clearly upset a lot of Chrome users because I mentioned Google not respecting your privacy, which is a given for a lot of companies.
As I understood it, they were implying that Apple's default is Google but they still care about privacy because they make it easy to switch to Duckduckgo.
I pointed out that this has been an essential feature in web browsers for years.
I wouldn't agree with that being the correct interpretation, just so you know.
Did DDG move away from consolidating results from Google and other engines?
Bing now
I tried to switch to DDG as my default search on iOS but my adblocker doesn’t block ads on it but it does on google, so I switched back
DDG has a built-in option to determine whether you want to see ads or not.
You can turn off ads directly in DDG settings
I tried to switch but the results were terrible. I ended up on bing which is still inferior to google but better than being google even if it is another behemoth data gathering company. At this point im just trying to stop centralizing who gets all my data don’t lest it’s a bit fragmented.
ddg gets its results from bing, I'd recommend startpage if you want google results while being privacy respecting.
DDG doesn't solely use Bing, though. From what I understand, it uses Bing + it's own crawler and algorithm so its results are almost always different than vanilla Bing.
Duck duck go is crap these days, probably since it uses Bing. All I ever get are "7 best ways to..." click bait, probably AI generated "articles".
I've been trying to use DDG but honestly it sucks. I can't imagine Apple switching to it, it would just make things worse for users, who commonly can't figure out how to switch defaults. I think it's just a negotiating point.
Google search has been fundamentally broken for at least two years. When the protests started on Reddit 90% of Google's search results we're broken.
I found this too. After the reddit fiasco, I found DDG to have no downside. The search syntax is a little different (google's is better) but the outputs arent radically different.
What difficulties are you finding with it and are you switching from Google? The results are as custom as Google given they haven't scraped your life history so wondering if that's it? I've been using DDG without any issues. About once every 6 months I struggle to find something so try the Google bang but have never found better results. In fact, I was shocked last time how crap the Google results were, just full of AI generated crap and SEO based crap.
To be honest, DDG is also struggling with that now as it's based on Bing. I have been trying a public searxg but not found it very good so far.
I love DDG and use it as my default, but there's no doubt that its index is shallower and its semantic matching can't compare to Google's. I'm a biogeochemist and spend a lot of time coding in R. Google is just better at surfacing rare science articles/blogs and stackoverflow pages where my query doesn't match exactly, but it is a relevant result. I use DDG for my personal searching and Google for professional searching
Try Kagi. You may love it like I did.
Hell no. Paying for something that's the same as ddg. That's a terrible idea, and the results aren't any better, despite how much their marketing claims it to be and that smaller blogs show up more.
I guess you get what you pay for then lol
In this case you actually get more for free. Not to mention the paid service is a privacy nightmare since all of the searched are done through a logged in user. Which also means it's incompatible with private browsing. But their marketing says "trust me bro", while they're selling you an overrated product. DDG even simply through a VPN is a million times more private then any logged in service. You need to assume if something is trackable, it will be tracked. Don't follow marketing blindly.
Results suck, it can't find anything. I really don't think it's related to lack of browsing history.
what do you search? i always find everything at first time
Not the same person, but DDG results just seem a little bit shittier than Google's results. It's nothing I can specifically put my finger on, outside of "I'm having more issues finding an answer for my query".
I also hate the basic layout of the page, but that's not a DDG problem as such, just a personal opinion.
I use DDG exclusively now, but I will say, despite the downvotes from these annoying ass FOSS users, DDG is worse.
If I am having some very specific issue with my computer, I will be page 5 on DDG without an answer, but Google will have one page 1.
Also Google Images is light years ahead DDG.
It took a long time to adjust to DDG, but now I am fine with it.
This has always been my number one issue, too. I'm in IT and still struggle to use DDG (and Bing, tbf) for technical issues. The results are either only vaguely related to what I'm searching for, outdated as shit, or completely irrelevant. Automotive stuff is the same. I can be ass deep in DDG results and just be getting shit on top of shit. It's frustrating, because I want to love DDG but it makes it so hard for my general use-case.
Just use ddg syntax operators and stuff will improve
While that is true, you shouldn't need to do that. The site should just work properly without diving into the advanced stuff. It's also WAY more annoying to use on mobile.
That didn't stop them from plowing ahead with Apple Maps, even though its debut was total garbage.
Debut and still is garbage.
There's a reason why Apple users have both installed.
Does Apple Maps even have reviews?
Anyone who thinks Apple Maps is garbage isn’t comparing A/B with Google Maps regularly. At least not in the areas I drive.
Door Dash defaults to Google Maps for directions, and when I Dash and use Google the routing is always poor and seemingly unaware of construction, road blocks, and traffic jams. It also sometimes asks me to make turns in places that aren’t streets and recommends U Turns where they are illegal. I’ve encountered none of that with Apple Maps.
Sometimes I’m too lazy to copy and paste an address into Google maps, and use Apple Maps. Every time I regret it. And exactly the opposite of what you said apple fails to see road closures and detours. While missing so many other things google has had for 15 years.
Apple tried to get me to turn into a dead-end, concrete wall once. Never used it again. But that was years ago, so if they’ve improved that’s great to hear! Google Maps plays this game where it tries to act as traffic control. It’ll only show options for paths I know to be super crappy to take at certain times of day, but won’t show an alternate (not so secret) path I KNOW to be better. I’ll start heading the alternate way and lo and behold, it cuts off 5 mins or whatever from the ETA. So stupid.
Don't agree.
I switched from Google quite recently, as I knew it was hard...
But now I'm mostly not using
!gunless for fewcache:searches or when I want use few features (sport results, without going to specific websites).You've to use some search syntax items more as
+but otherwise it's quite good and clear to read.They should make a deal with Kagi if they had any brains.
Even though im not sure if Kagi could take that amount of traffic right away.
Oh, okay
lol
Vote for Brave search.
Surprised they dont buy kagi tbh
Thank fuck they didn't
What's a kagi
It’s a search engine with better results than google https://kagi.com
But it's not free. Pretty important point for a lot of people.
Yeah funny no one is mentioning the cost. It's wildly expensive.
What would you say a good price is ?
The lowest tier should be about $20/yr. I'd pay that. The family unlimited $60/yr. I'd pay that for my wife and kids to have it too.
How's it better than Google? Google is the king of data, idk how this competes with that
Google monetizes the search experience. It’s gotten steadily worse at its primary function for the last 15 years. Eventually, a better search engine will exist, it just takes time for Google to enshittify theirs enough.
Meh, I use adblocker and ghostery. The impact on my results is minimal if anything
K
Is ddg any good?
I feel like Bing would just be better at this point.
DDG is great, highly recommended. It reminds me of what Google used to be.
It's garbage outside of the US for local results. Bing is somewhat better, but still not good enough. In the US though, plenty of good alternatives to Google search
DDG is only garbage for not personalised search results.
Which is kind of the point in a privacy driven search engine.
DDG literally has a search filter to search only websites belonging to a certain country.
Sincerely, a Belgian DDG user who has been using it exclusively for the last 6 years.
I'm outside the US and I've been using DDG exclusively on every device for about 5 years now. It's excellent.
No problems in the UK
I'm outside US (Philippines), most searches are local as long as your country is set on DDG settings. I've been using DDG since 2021 and it's refreshing that I actually searching with my actual query, instead of "click the first, random result" and call it a day.
I honestly might have to look into it then. Google is still pretty decent got me but I’m just finding myself either using Reddit to find an answer or asking chat gpt (purely excel related questions)
I’ve had DDG as my default search engine on my iPhone ever since AMP pages became annoying. I have to use Google about once a month. Otherwise DDG is pretty good.
It does show you more relevant results based on your query, withou doing any guessing about what you might have meant by it. That being said, sometimes I use Google to search for something when DDG is giving me bad results. But overall I would recommend, it's muxh more better experience with the results I am seeing. I have tried Bing for a while as well, but it was thinking too much instead of just showing me the results.
The only reason I had to use Google was to search by image. Which is a feature DDG doesn't have sadly.
For specific search, I found perplexity.ai to be much better and faster, it uses AI to scan the websites and give summaries as to why they are relevant to your query.
I find that when I’m looking for very specific things Google is still king but DDG is much better for broad strokes.
I'd say the opposite: ddg can get me what I want, if I know exactly what I want. If I'm just vaguely guessing, ddg us as good as my guess, while Google tries to guess with me and it works out sometimes.
yep it is quite good
Ddg is Bing with less tracking. I mean, literally it is Bing.
After 2 years of exclusive use: yes. It's just as good if not better. Google is filled with ads and Bing just sucks.
DDG is bing.
*modified bing
Bing does potentially have slightly worse results, what with the "personalized" (tracking-based, ad/promoted) results. But yeah.
I just switched from ddg (after years of using it across all my devices) to kagi, but ddg is good. The results can be iffy at times, especially on unusual or niche queries, but their bang system lets you forward the query to other engines to see if they have the result you are looking for. In my household where I control and direct the tech, ddg has been the standard for many years for all our devices. I recommend it to everyone who is still using a big-name search engine.
Kagi is fucking amazing.
I've used it for a few months, and in the end I was always using !g
It's just not good enough in a lot of contexts. I'm having a much better time with kagi
It’s okay. If you want something genuinely as good as Google, if not better, Kagi is what you want.
I have been using it exclusively for years. Does its job most of the time and when it doesn't and I include Google results (via bang !g) Google doesn't really find it either.
However, I've opted out of most Google services in parallel, so their model of me probably isn't the best anymore. If in their bubble, their results may still be better (creeps me out though, so I live with non-perfect search).
Ddg results are pretty horrible in my experience. Statpage (google results) and brave search both have better results.
Brave Search is awful for non-English results. Startpage is decent but only because it's basically Google results.
I can't speak to non-English results, and I agree Startpage is just a Google proxy.
Shout out to startpage! I use it almost exclusively and it is great.
Yeah, brave search is what I use for my main searches, but ddg bangs do come in useful. Brave has it too.
Bangs are essential, especially if you use DDG HTML, which doesnt have tabs for different kinds of searches
Upvote this question, it's pretty relevant to the issue of whether this would have been good for Apple (no, it would not have been)
DDG is my default search on mobile, but half the time I end up back on Google. Google is better at guessing exactly what I want and giving that content fast, such as the weather, people always ask answers, or quick facts about things that saves me from loading the site underneath the result.
But sometimes I know exactly what I want and Google won't give it to me - because it decided I want something else.
That's where a well built query can work better on DDG. However... DDG is more susceptible to backlink spamming and old school SEO techniques to rank content near the top. So depending on the people behind the search results, some queries are fine and some can still be garbage.
Also for image and video search Google is top.
Strong disagree on Google having a better video/image search. Bing is top there, then Google, then DDG, imo.