I've been using DuckDuckGo since the Snowden leaks, but with recent developments, I'm thinking maybe the time has come to find a European alternative. Sadly, all of these rely at least in part on...
I've been using DuckDuckGo since the Snowden leaks, but with recent developments, I'm thinking maybe the time has come to find a European alternative. Sadly, all of these rely at least in part on US-based search engines.
While two likeminded initiatives joining forces to help us becoming less dependent on the US is definitely a good thing in the current context, I'm a bit concerned about us falling down the same...
While two likeminded initiatives joining forces to help us becoming less dependent on the US is definitely a good thing in the current context, I'm a bit concerned about us falling down the same centralization trap down the line. The US is a much more blatant example but we're not immune to letting self-serving corporate interests/outright fascism ruin everything either. If we blindly go "US sux Europe roolz" only to copy them without addressing why the US based services are a threat I fear we could end up with the same crop of garbage painted in blue and gold instead of an actually sustainable alternative.
Point is, we shouldn't be trusting services on the basis of being European, but on having a sensible approach to build infrastructure that serves its users rather than exploits them, otherwise we'll be right back to step one. I do think the EU is in a better position overall to set this up, but let's not forget we're just as capable of fucking it up as the rest of them.
I tried out Qwant for a while as it is the default search engine on iodé Browser, a fork of the Android version of Firefox that ships with iodéOS, itself a LineageOS fork focused on avoiding the...
I tried out Qwant for a while as it is the default search engine on iodé Browser, a fork of the Android version of Firefox that ships with iodéOS, itself a LineageOS fork focused on avoiding the Google Play Services. It was serviceable (and this was before Google decided to shoot itself in the foot with a double-barreled shotgun so I'm sure it got a lot better since I tried it), but I remember having issues with regional settings not meshing well with how I was looking up information. Being a French native speaker but also fluent in English, not only I kept having to change regional settings as I was switching the language of my queries, but the impact of that setting seems to go well beyond affecting the language of the search results to the point of hampering usability.
As a random example, if I were to look for "tildes" on Qwant, I would only get results relevant to the typographical character, with this website nowhere to be found unless you set the regional setting to "Canada (en)". Admittedly this is a minor example as "tildes website" does result in tildes.net showing up regardless of whether my regional setting is set to France or any of the available English-speaking countries (and in fact, as the first result), but I do find it unfortunate that geographic location seems to matter enough to this filter that Tildes ends up being "relevant enough" to show up when looking up its exact name only in Canada, despite the website itself being an international (if English-speaking by necessity) community. I'd also complain about the tildeverse failing to show up up when looking for "tilde website", but they do show up from "tilde community", which to be fair is a more accurate descriptor for them in the first place. Overall, it seems to be more a matter of carefully wording your search queries and the regional filtering being more granular than I'd like than a more fundamental issue with its ability to return relevant search results, so while I personally stopped using it, it does seem to be a good choice.
(Another minor gripe I have is that while pulling up Qwant to fact-check myself as I wrote this comment, an LLM-powered summary popped up on its own as I was searching without asking, though there was a clearly highlighted toggle right on the summary box and it didn't bother me after I toggled it off, so as far as pushing AI features go there's a lot worse than Qwant out there)
Tangentially relevant: SearXNG is an open-source metasearch engine (meaning it pulls the search results it gives you from many other search engines) that can help lessen your dependence on the US...
Tangentially relevant: SearXNG is an open-source metasearch engine (meaning it pulls the search results it gives you from many other search engines) that can help lessen your dependence on the US services (and potentially protect your privacy, if set up accordingly). You can try it out through public instances, or, if you're up to it, host your own. I personally haven't used it much beyond testing that it worked (and, of all things, as the web search backend while I was experimenting with LLMs) as I currently rely on Kagi, but I do have a private instance deployed that I hope to have family members switch to from Google and I have heard positive feedback from existing users.
Off-topic aside: As for why not Kagi itself...
While I personally like the service, it is still ultimately a US based company which makes it unsuitable as a recommendation for this thread, and it's a paid search engine which is by itself a hard sell when free (in either sense of the word) alternatives that work well already exist.
I've been using DuckDuckGo since the Snowden leaks, but with recent developments, I'm thinking maybe the time has come to find a European alternative. Sadly, all of these rely at least in part on US-based search engines.
Qwant and Ecosia are merging to create the first proper, EU-centric, search index. It won't happen tomorrow, but keep an eye on 'em.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/11/ecosia-and-qwant-two-european-search-engines-join-forces-on-building-an-index-to-shrink-reliance-on-big-tech/
While two likeminded initiatives joining forces to help us becoming less dependent on the US is definitely a good thing in the current context, I'm a bit concerned about us falling down the same centralization trap down the line. The US is a much more blatant example but we're not immune to letting self-serving corporate interests/outright fascism ruin everything either. If we blindly go "US sux Europe roolz" only to copy them without addressing why the US based services are a threat I fear we could end up with the same crop of garbage painted in blue and gold instead of an actually sustainable alternative.
Point is, we shouldn't be trusting services on the basis of being European, but on having a sensible approach to build infrastructure that serves its users rather than exploits them, otherwise we'll be right back to step one. I do think the EU is in a better position overall to set this up, but let's not forget we're just as capable of fucking it up as the rest of them.
Qwant is really good, from my experience.
I tried out Qwant for a while as it is the default search engine on iodé Browser, a fork of the Android version of Firefox that ships with iodéOS, itself a LineageOS fork focused on avoiding the Google Play Services. It was serviceable (and this was before Google decided to shoot itself in the foot with a double-barreled shotgun so I'm sure it got a lot better since I tried it), but I remember having issues with regional settings not meshing well with how I was looking up information. Being a French native speaker but also fluent in English, not only I kept having to change regional settings as I was switching the language of my queries, but the impact of that setting seems to go well beyond affecting the language of the search results to the point of hampering usability.
As a random example, if I were to look for "tildes" on Qwant, I would only get results relevant to the typographical character, with this website nowhere to be found unless you set the regional setting to "Canada (en)". Admittedly this is a minor example as "tildes website" does result in tildes.net showing up regardless of whether my regional setting is set to France or any of the available English-speaking countries (and in fact, as the first result), but I do find it unfortunate that geographic location seems to matter enough to this filter that Tildes ends up being "relevant enough" to show up when looking up its exact name only in Canada, despite the website itself being an international (if English-speaking by necessity) community. I'd also complain about the tildeverse failing to show up up when looking for "tilde website", but they do show up from "tilde community", which to be fair is a more accurate descriptor for them in the first place. Overall, it seems to be more a matter of carefully wording your search queries and the regional filtering being more granular than I'd like than a more fundamental issue with its ability to return relevant search results, so while I personally stopped using it, it does seem to be a good choice.
(Another minor gripe I have is that while pulling up Qwant to fact-check myself as I wrote this comment, an LLM-powered summary popped up on its own as I was searching without asking, though there was a clearly highlighted toggle right on the summary box and it didn't bother me after I toggled it off, so as far as pushing AI features go there's a lot worse than Qwant out there)
Tangentially relevant: SearXNG is an open-source metasearch engine (meaning it pulls the search results it gives you from many other search engines) that can help lessen your dependence on the US services (and potentially protect your privacy, if set up accordingly). You can try it out through public instances, or, if you're up to it, host your own. I personally haven't used it much beyond testing that it worked (and, of all things, as the web search backend while I was experimenting with LLMs) as I currently rely on Kagi, but I do have a private instance deployed that I hope to have family members switch to from Google and I have heard positive feedback from existing users.
Off-topic aside: As for why not Kagi itself...
While I personally like the service, it is still ultimately a US based company which makes it unsuitable as a recommendation for this thread, and it's a paid search engine which is by itself a hard sell when free (in either sense of the word) alternatives that work well already exist.