For several years I’ve been using DuckDuckGo instead of Google Search, and I’ve been overall quite happy with the results. Only rarely had I to resort to Google search (!g).
During the last month or two, however, I’ve found myself using the !g switch and Google search more than half of the time. DuckDuckGo shows no or few results where Google shows more (and useful) ones.
Still I don’t want to give in. So:
- Have you also experienced this worsening of DuckDuckGo?
- Which other more privacy-respecting alternatives do you recommend?
I haven’t really experienced a worsening of DDG, and this is a bit off topic, perhaps, but—
I have yet to find a better alternative to Google’s video search. Google Books also remains valuable in many ways, since it will give you different “search inside the book”-type search results than the Internet Archive will (and they also have some books that IA does not).
What’s annoying to me is that StartPage, which is supposed to have Google search results, and by and large does, does not give the same video results as Google (go ahead, try it). It would also be nice to have an Invidious or FreeTube type front end for Google Books, and I believe there used to be something like that, but not any longer.
Some Google products still have definite value, it’s just important that they derive no benefit from us using them.
I remember reading that there was something “fishy” with Startpage, which is why I abandoned it quickly. But don’t remember where.
Luckily I don’t often search for videos, but I agree that it seems difficult to find good search alternatives there.
For what it’s worth, Mullvad recently opened up Leta to people without Mullvad VPN accounts. It’s a google/brave search proxy so pretty much what Startpage claims to do, but I trust Mullvad to actually respect my privacy more than I do Startpage.
This is awesome. Is there a DDG !bang for this? I would love to use it in place of !g for the few times I resort to !g.
I just checked and it doesn’t look like it (if you want to search for DDG bangs here’s the link, just scroll down a bit.). But you could always just add Leta as a search engine in your browser preferences and set a keystroke for it. For example, type L into the URL bar then space and it’ll use Leta for your query. (Note, I use Firefox, not sure if it’s the same with Chromium based browsers).
I submitted a request for !leta. If it gets rejected I’ll try what you said. +1 for Firefox.
StartPage should be !sp.
I use Startpage and I get decent results. I never google anymore except maps. What is wrong with them?
Ah, sorry, I guess I implied there’s something nefarious going on with Startpage. But there isn’t as far as I can tell. I just trust Mullvad more based on their track record. If you’re happy using Startpage keep using it.
Startpage having a good track record is one of the main reasons why I’m happy to use them. Nothing sketchy so far and decent results. I am also a Mullvad customer for the same reasons.
It would be nice if Leta had tabs for images, videos, etc.
This?
Yes, though I think I also read it from other sources. But I want to read more and find out further news about those claims.