• 𝔽𝕩𝕠𝕞𝕥@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    302·
    22 hours ago

    Damn shame. I use DDG, but them consistently fucking up makes me want to switch. Though i don’t know of any alternatives.

    edit: thanks for the recommendations!

    • DrinkMonkey@lemmy.caEnglish
      3310·
      22 hours ago

      Kagi. Privacy focussed, no ads, and excellent results with options for sorting preferred sources to appear at the top, or not. Costs money but man, it’s fast and good in the way Google was back in the day. Some plans also include anonymous access to a variety of LLMs though they are older models, and if they can run them locally, they do. Really liking it.

      • troed@fedia.io
        303·
        22 hours ago

        FWIW the founder of Kagi is adamant that subscribers must accept part of the subscruption money being sent to Russia (Yandex, fully govt-controlled) and has refused all attempts at excluding it. When questions started appearing he even tried claiming Yandex isn’t even russian.

            • Ilandar@lemmy.todayEnglish
              12·
              10 hours ago

              Thank you!

              EDIT: Okay, reading the replies there it seems like this is a virtue signalling issue rather than something specifically wrong with Yandex search results. Like how some people tried to start a boycott of Proton over a tweet that praised a Trump appointment, or accused Ladybird browser of being “transphobic” because someone tried to discuss gender pronouns in the issue tracker and was told it was not the right place.

              • AbsolutelyClawless@piefed.socialEnglish
                1·
                2 hours ago

                Not wanting to financially contribute to a country that’s invaded and has been performing genocide on its neighbor, and has been actively waging hybrid wars on European and US democracies is not virtue signaling.

                Also, this.

          • july@leminal.spaceEnglish
            102·
            18 hours ago

            Ngl I don’t get these people always being like “Source?”

            Just look it up bruh it takes less time than to comment

            • Ilandar@lemmy.todayEnglish
              4·
              10 hours ago

              Asking the person who purports to be an expert on the situation to provide some context is much faster than someone who knows nothing about it, like myself, trying to find it.

            • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafeEnglish
              42·
              14 hours ago

              Yea, it’s gets to sounding like playground argument tactics “nuh uh!” (which is basically sophistry).

              Even when I’m being genuinely curious these days, I try to ask for a source by making it a convo, like “do you remember where you came across that or what should I search for to get good results”, instead of “source?”.

      • smh@slrpnk.netEnglish
        64·
        22 hours ago

        I swapped to Kagi this month. It’s refreshing. I’ll probably end up on the $10/month plan. They also have a library pilot program I’m trying to get my academic library to look into.

        • DrinkMonkey@lemmy.caEnglish
          3·
          19 hours ago

          I used it for almost a year at the lowest tier, then got the couples plan more recently and it has high spouse approval factor, even though there was some initial setup

        • Sonalder@lemmy.mlEnglish
          3·
          22 hours ago

          Yeah it is dependant on Google and Google can do censorship. However from personnal experience (maybe it differ in different countries) Google does less censorship than Microsoft at least regarding their search engines.

    • HelloRoot@lemy.lolEnglish
      8·
      22 hours ago

      Best one is probably (in my opinion) selfhosting a searxng instance. It takes results from a dozen of engines (you configure which ones) and merges them according to the configured weights and some algorithmic magic.

      If you use public instances, the owner might have tuned the results to suit themselves and it returns garbage for your usecase. And also they frequently get timeouts because a lot of people use them. So don’t get turned off by trying a couple of them.

      Since I started running my own private instance I am super happy with the search results.

        • entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          6·
          19 hours ago

          Yeah, they advertise using only the context of the keywords of your current search. No storing of personal data, no profiling. They’ve had third parties review that. Seems fine to me.

        • Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          2·
          18 hours ago

          Startpage’s majority shareholder is System1 who is an adtech company. We don’t believe that to be an issue as they have a distinctly separate privacy policy. The Privacy Guides team reached out to Startpage back in 2020 to clear up any concerns with System1’s sizeable investment into the service, and we were satisfied with the answers we received.

          From privacyguides.org