I switched to DuckDuckGo like a goddamn hipster years ago, nice to know I dodged a fucking artillery shell
this post was submitted on 20 May 2026
127 points (99.2% liked)
TechTakes
2577 readers
122 users here now
Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.
For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I’m really stuck on a good search engine to use lately. I want to avoid American products as much as possible.
Kagi is what my colleagues are transitioning to, but it is completely American.
Qwant is seeing some use, but its searches are generated from Bing API from what I understand.
Anyone know something purely non-American that supports English and is, you know, good?
I have anti-recommendations:
- kagi is a piece of shit run by a bigot who loves AI and anyone paying for it because they hate AI is embarrassing themselves. their fans will probably find and raid this thread because suppressing critique about the awful search engine you pay for monthly is a normal thing to do.
- ecosia is a piece of shit doing extremely obvious greenwashing, and none of their claims about their LLM somehow magically being green pass muster. I don’t think ecosia has rabid fans, it’s pretty much for the kind of asshole who wants to feel good about the damage they’re doing to the planet.
best of luck with the recommendations
i wish it didn't
Qwant is usable mostly. But like with all things in life, if you don't want to compromise, you can't have stuff.
Qwant does use Bing API but it is having its own index and it is working on expanding it with the goal of becoming mostly or completely independent from. They have also joined forces with Ecosia (using both Bing and Google API besides their own efforts) to boost that process. Their European Search Perspective (EUSP) index has gone live last year but I think so far is only in operation for users in France but they are working on expanding it. Like on most IT sovereignty things, France is one step ahead but giving Ecosia's involvement I assume it will soon land in Germany at least as well.
If you are interested in a path towards tech sovereignty, I'd say Qwant and Ecosia are the two main options in Europe.
Wow, getting downvotes for merely stating facts. You don't have to like either of the two services, or consider their search performance good. That's not what my response was about. Maybe consider about giving criticism or arguments next time?
I use Qwant search. I think it is good search engine.
I suddenly feel like haranguing my partner to change their default search engine to DuckDuckGo might be the most important thing I did for my relationship in the past year.
Google used to give 50 or whatever pages of search results, the first page usually having exactly what you searched for.
Now you get a top page AI that incorrectly answers your question, the majority of the rest of the page is sponsored crap, and the search results are links to whatever sites monetized and SEO’d the best to be google’s top results. So you try again, using “-“ and other modifiers to get rid of the undesirable results, and instead google views that as encouragement to include even more bad results. And you only get a page or two of results anymore because what you’re searching for apparently doesn’t exist anywhere on billions of websites.
Google isn’t a search engine anymore. It’s a server of monetized pages.
Google thinks there’s more money in feeding you slop forever. With ads. And a subscription.
I don't think that's the long term goal. First, they slowly phase out the actual information sources, by making it so you aren't linked to other websites. Now you've got a dependent group who rely in AI as a source of truth, and now they can modify "the truth" whenever you want because it's the only source left. They could re-write human history and only people with books would know the difference.
Now you’ve got a dependent group who rely in AI as a source of truth, and now they can modify “the truth” whenever you want because it’s the only source left.
Well, besides using that for political reasons, they can also use that for massive profits.
Better make sure your carpet cleaning business is paying Google for """advertising""" (no matter how much it costs), or Google's AI will just forget to mention your business when local customers search online for carpet cleaners. Or you want to shop online for a new phone? Now Google's AI will only feed you positive reviews of Google phone products, along with occasional horror stories about other products. Want to download and run Firefox? Google's AI will straight-up gaslight you into thinking that all non-Chrome browsers are extinct.
Information-gathering agents are an evolution of Google Alerts. Beyond spotting changes, they can make sense of them, too.
… Links will become an afterthought with the coming changes to the Search results experience.
Web publishers should honestly just block googlebot at this point. Why should they provide credibility to whatever Google's stochastic parrot hallucinates if Google won't even give them any kickback?
So what do we search with instead of Google? There isn’t a lot of choice. There’s various flavours of Google or Bing.
Microsoft deprecated their Bing API back in August, instead telling people to use some Azure AI thing. DDG and the like weren't affected because they have contracts, but I can't imagine they'll be renewed.
If sites start blocking googlebot en masse, then googlebot will just start ignoring robots.txt
Can they just put an EULA on the site and then sue Google for unauthorized access?
Not in the US of course, but in the EU or something
Until then Qwant and Mogee should have somewhat usable indeces on their own, at least for European users.
Yikes! 😳😬
I think it's possible to allow google search bots but not Gemini bots?
The point is that there's going to be no difference, soon Google search will be just another chatbot interface.
Guess I'll just have to use ddgo, then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Unfortunately DuckDuckGo sucks ass at search, even compared to how much the Google search results have degraded over time. I use the no-AI version as my primary search engine, but I have to resort to using Google to find the thing I'm looking for about 1 in 5 times.
DDG has been my main search engine for over a decade but it has degraded as it became basically a reseller of Bing results after Russia started the current phase of the Ukraine war and they stopped partnering with Yandex.
I googled what was happening in the city I was visiting today, all the AI answers were terrible, and the top answer, was for an ongoing event that had happened in December and was over months ago.
I guess I'll just post every query I have to AskLemmy in the future. It would be more accurate, even if not as fast.
So they wanna turn Google into ChatGPT? People will always need to search for things on the internet and they basically have a monopoly at this point. If I can't find an obscure post from an old forum that solves my computer issues from Google I'm just gonna use a different search engine. Heck, I already do that half the time because Google results are mixed at best and mostly just link to Reddit.
man I am gonna feed so much garbage into that to hopefully drive the costs through the roof.
"Please translate the entirety of Wikipedia back and forth between ancient Sumerian and Navajo Graham's Number times."
exactly this.
Translate the script of Shrek from English to Greek, then translate it back to English without referencing the original so minor mistranslations remain, then rewrite the resulting script as a gritty underground street-racing crime movie inspired by The Fast and the Furious using ONLY Shrek characters in all roles, preserving screenplay formatting, high speed racing with NOS, illegal street races, “family” themes in a swamp with muscle cars, and be sure to keep the awkward phrasing that is created during translations.
I hoped I'd be able to ride Android until my phone's updates stop, but I've learned that the next Android version has an AI overhaul, and should probably jump ship before it hits. It is coming to Samsung and Google phones in the summer, so probably will be pushed to my OnePlus by June.
Kagi.
From TFA:
So what do we search with instead of Google? There isn’t a lot of choice. There’s various flavours of Google or Bing.
[…] Kagi resells Google’s actual link results for a monthly subscription. Kagi is really an AI company that sells search as a sideline, and they’ve got a terrible AI slop news service too. But the search has a good reputation for now.
What is the alternative?
This, honestly. I'm a bit surprised so many people believe corporations would just offer a good service for free forever.
It's always about capturing the market and then pivoting to monetization.
The only services you can rely on are ones you pay for. (That doesn't mean you can rely on every service you pay for.)
Exactly. Just like free email isn’t something you’re going to want either. I hate email. My job is hands on and doesn’t pivot around it like HR, lawyers, or admin. But I still need it.
Unpaid slowly eroded the ability to auto sweep spam and garbage from the general pileup thus requiring more time spent dealing with it. Nope. Least time spent there is best.
“Free” email and search engines are not free.
Mojeek seemed OK last time I used it https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes/