If it works for you… I agree with the general sentiment of “if its free you are the product”. However, I see kagi come up so often around here that I feel like it’s some astro turfing. I tried it and was not impressed. SearXNG is by far the best search engine I’ve used in a long time and the best part is I am hosting it locally on my PC, traffic is going out a VPN. You get the privacy and the best results possible since its a meta engine using many different engines.
Never used brave, I think DDG is actually a pretty decent search engine overall. I use it as my backup to searxng and used it primarily for years now before switching to searxng.
If so, I wonder if that timeline lines up with when I was trying SearX. For the first few days I was blown away by the results, and then suddenly they became absolute garbage. I ended up switching back to DDG.
Then another one comes up, and the cycle continues
I use Kagi. At least I’m the one paying.
If it works for you… I agree with the general sentiment of “if its free you are the product”. However, I see kagi come up so often around here that I feel like it’s some astro turfing. I tried it and was not impressed. SearXNG is by far the best search engine I’ve used in a long time and the best part is I am hosting it locally on my PC, traffic is going out a VPN. You get the privacy and the best results possible since its a meta engine using many different engines.
It is better than ddg and Brave, that much I can say. Brave especially have been shit recently.
Never used brave, I think DDG is actually a pretty decent search engine overall. I use it as my backup to searxng and used it primarily for years now before switching to searxng.
Didn’t Google nuke SearX? Or did they only nuke public instances?
Google results work fine for me on my home instance:
https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/7a6dbe22-eb20-4fab-bbf8-f948a9449588.webp
If so, I wonder if that timeline lines up with when I was trying SearX. For the first few days I was blown away by the results, and then suddenly they became absolute garbage. I ended up switching back to DDG.
Wondering about this too 🤔
If you are naive enough to believe that they are not collecting your data. Good for you and your peace of mind.
I feel like it’s a good way to get sued if you straight up lie to paying customers
Cash out, get sued by angry customers, file for bankruptcy. Who cares about your public image being shattered when you are already gone with the wind?
Well at least that gives them more incentive to stay clean compare to other search engines, no?
These days, paying doesn’t guarantee your exclusion from being the product. The only way to guarantee privacy is to design it into the product.