this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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Which privacy-focused search engine are you using? (self.technology)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by schmurnan to c/technology
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TL;DR - which privacy-focused search engine do people recommend, preferably one that can also easily be used as a default option in Safari?

I ditched Google in about 2016ish I would guess, and since then have used DDG as my default search engine.

As someone entrenched in the Apple ecosystem, it’s always seemed like a sound choice, as it’s one of the search engines built in to Safari on both iOS and macOS.

After spending a bit more time recently playing around with and updating my Docker containers, I started hosting a Whoogle container, which seemed to work pretty well, but I don’t see many out there talking about it, so not sure how good it actually is. I then tried a SearXNG container, but either had it misconfigured or just wasn’t getting many search results back.

At the moment I’m trying out Startpage, but I know there are potential privacy concerns since they were part-bought in 2019 by a US ad-tech company.

I’m also playing around with different browsers at the moment, flicking between Safari, Firefox and Brave. At which point I stumbled across Brave Search, which seems pretty promising.

So, which search engines do you all recommend?

UPDATE: Probably should’ve done a poll! But latest (if I’ve captured everything correctly) is:

  • DuckDuckGo - 10
  • Qwant / SearXNG / Kagi / Brave - 4
  • Startpage / Ecosia - 2
  • Google - 1

As to my other questions around browsers:

  • Majority seem to use Firefox
  • Some mentions of Brave
  • One mention of Arc
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Personally, I use duck duck go as my primary search engine but I only use it to search for things. But since chatgpt4, I use perplexity.ai for actual answers. Browser wise, I use duck duck go where I can or Arc on my Mac with all the usual privacy plugins.

[–] schmurnan 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What are your thoughts on Arc? I tried it a couple of months ago but couldn’t really get used to the layout, etc.

Sure it’s as good a browser as any, I just wasn’t feeling it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

For me personally, it fits how work with the web. I really like the full screen view and the tab navigation between spaces and bookmarks. Because it’s so different, There is a learning curve but once passed it, I genuinely enjoy the experience it offers. I don’t care much for the other customisation features but I can see why they’d appeal to users.