Comment on just realized whoogle is dead now
sbeak@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
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.
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.
recently saw this article here, i’m not sure if ecosia is a good solution now. their results seem mostly identical to ddg/bing too though it’s occasionally better than them for some reason
qwant is good, but they geoblock certain countries including mine since 2023 or so. having to use proxy/vpn for just searching really sucks
sbeak@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago their results seem mostly identical to ddg/bing too though it’s occasionally better than them for some reason
I believe Ecosia uses either Google or Bing search indexes depending on the region, but they are working on an independent index with Qwant that will hopefully be a good alternative! If you live in France, it’s already bring trialled!
But yeah, Ecosia is like any search engine and there is bit of greenwashing with LLMs and all. However, they are a non-profit with transparent earnings reports, and that makes them better than Google, Bing, DDG, etc. for me.
they geoblock certain countries including mine since 2023 or so
Dang, that sucks.
Ecosia also has an LLM which make little sense with their mission IMO
Hueristic_Autistic@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Chat gpt says the search results are served by Bing and Google. You’re not escaping Google, just the AI.
DreadPirateShawn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Thus the “working towards an independent European search index” part of the comment you ignored while talking with your autocomplete bot.
Hueristic_Autistic@lemmy.world 1 day ago
No I saw it but because the question would’ve been answered by Google anyways before the gemini thing I just used chatgpt to ask it who services Ecosia like servicing Mint. If they took away Ai, we’d still have the answer box that Google would’ve given and then we’d still have to double check our sources.
Did we all forget that Google used to give give an answer at the top of the page before Ai?
Bro, stop. Get some help. At least check the sources it used…
Hueristic_Autistic@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
You know what’s kind of funny, is that there was a solid decade of people saying google it instead of just having a human conversation and giving their personal experiences and answers based off of what that person knew and then you’d do your own research after your friend or family member would give you an answer to the question you asked.
What’s the difference between that and chatgpt?
Hueristic_Autistic@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Well I did double check it by simply googlong it and what do you knwo even Ecosia says it on their site Image
That’s fair enough! Thankfully they do let you disable it, which is nice. I mostly like that they are quite transparent about how they operate! The planting trees thing is a nice bonus, but they certainly aren’t saints to the environment, no search engine is