Guest Post by aka.attrition
There are several alternative web search engines that you can use instead of Google. No doubt most readers are aware of Brave Search (https://search.brave.com) and DuckDuckGo (although DDG has fallen out of favour with some privacy advocates due to actions it has recently been involved in). However there are others and this article gives a brief introduction to several of them while keeping it as short and sweet as possible.
Startpage – https://www.startpage.com
Founded in the Netherlands in 2006 and protected by stringent European consumer privacy laws, including the GDPR. These are widely regarded as the strongest privacy protections in the world. Totally private web-searching with no personal data or search history being saved. Results can be filtered by Web, Images, Videos, and News.
SearX – https://searx.thegpm.org
Searx is a free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from more than 70 search services. Users are neither tracked nor profiled. Additionally, searx can be used over Tor for online anonymity i.e. it will search other search engines on your behalf while protecting you from leaking personal data. Not the fastest of search engines. Results can be filtered by various categories.
Mojeek – https://www.mojeek.com
UK based privacy focused search engine started in 2004. They use their own web-crawlers and their own database for search results. In 2006, Mojeek became the first search engine to have a no tracking privacy policy. In 2022 Mojeek became the default search engine of the Privacy Browser. Results can be filtered by Web, Images, or News.
Gibiru – https://gibiru.com
US based privacy oriented, no-tracking, no cookies, etc. search engine started in 2009. When you submit a Gibiru search you’ll see “All Results” and “Censored Content” options. The All Results option lets you see all results including those that won’t appear in Google. This anti-censorship tool extends to current news giving users an unprecedented ability to search all up to date news sources – not just ones approved by Google. Results can be filtered by Web, Images, Videos, and News.
Peekier – https://peekier.com
Peekier shows you a website preview of the search results. Clicking on a result will maximize the preview and allow you to scroll through the website. You can then decide if the information displayed on the website interests you or not before clicking on the link i.e. it provides a way to see the website without actually visiting it unless you actually want to. Very different approach to the usual search engine results page. All the usual privacy conditions apply. Worth a look!
MetaGer – https://metager.org
MetaGer uses multiple search indexes and is an open-source search engine that’s based in Germany and protected by European consumer privacy laws, including the GDPR. MetaGer is a metasearch engine; the search engine pulls results from the Scopia crawler and other search engines such as Bing. Every result tells you which search engine it was sourced from and gives you the option to open the result anonymously via a proxy server that doesn’t transfer your data to the destination page. Results can be filtered by Web, Images, Shopping, and News.
Big Picture
Placing various search engines on the scale of Tracking vs. No-Tracking and Independent vs. Dependent (source: https://blog.mojeek.com/2021/03/to-track-or-not-to-track.html)
The Even Bigger Picture
An interactive map of most all search engines can be found at the following link and it enables you to click on any engine to see what they do, how, and whether they draw results from other search engines like Google or Bing.
https://www.searchenginemap.com
Here is a static screenshot to give you an idea of how the interactive map works but do try the link above to get a really interesting insight into the search engine universe.
Thank you for reading and remember, if you’re using a service for free on the internet then it’s probably you that’s being sold.
I came across this one. At some point there will be a Premium membership to help fund it, but interesting none-the-less.
https://neeva.com/
It’s been so long ago that I had to decide to stop using Startpage, I cannot even remember anymore what the exact cause was.
But if it pushes me to remove it as my -back then- primary search engine as well as entirely from my list of search engines, it was something really bad.
After recently DuckDuckGo followed their example of killing themselves (for me), I’m down to Yandex search (may The Russians enjoy tracking me) and Brave.
Wherever you go ‘m’ you WILL BE TRACKED. I met a wonderful guy in Simons Town circumnavigating the world in his 28 foot yacht with so many electronics it looked like a spy boat – that was in 2006. Everyone mooring in FBYC – https://fbyc.co.za/ was given nickname and his was ‘Mexico Mike’ because this is from where he had left on his voyage.
He was an ex-NSA cryptographer who had left with the decrypts of the whole world electronic charts which sold for $10k on the market at the time. He was selling his decrypts for ZAR400 to fund his trip around the world. I bought them (2 x discs) with enthusiasm and still have them today. I had to leave for UK before he took his departure. My wife remained and she will tell stories of his yacht full of electronic surveillance equipment – she was amazed. He told her that NSA tracks everything and everyone throughout the globe! Scary.
Every key stroke, including these.
My new hobby is disguises. Won’t “help” with the keystrokes but perhaps when shopping Wal Mart’s with it’s multitude of surveillance cameras I’ll be “seen” as a different person each time. And it does not matter where one “shops” so please refrain from suggesting not to shop at Wal Mart’s.
Always wear dark sunglasses too so the zoom in surveillance camera’s may not detect your eyes that are already in the databases anyway. Still, good advice. Oh, and walk differently each visit. It takes practice though. Sometime a “limp” in the left leg, sometimes the right and hunched over the shopping cart is good practice as well. Never wear the same clothes or shoes either.
Somebody’s Watching Me
The problem with startpage is it sucks at searching for most things.
According to the interactive map of search engines (link above) Startpage is a meta-search engine and uses Google to get search results, i.e. not using its own databases. It only provides an anonymous way to search Google without tracking you. So any failure to show good results will be because Google is filtering the results … which we know.
Problem is, there are always “work arounds”. Any technology devised by man can be cracked by , uh, man.
do you know if there have been any changes with Brave Browser that would make it a security risk? I know that the lead guy that started it was booted from Mozilla because he sent a contribution to a CA bill that was not ‘woke’. Brave is supposed to be a preferred browser for more security relating to data collection, correct?
What about Swiss Cows? https://swisscows.com/en
Honestly I never remember to use it. I just type in “Fuck the CIA” and go from there.
From the interactive map of search engines, SwissCows is a meta-search engine and gets its search results from Bing (Microsoft). But is privacy oriented so is a decent choice from that aspect.
I spent the time today doing some extensive research (several hours worth) on all of the search engines listed in the article, plus those listed in the comments section, employing several “difficult-to-find” sites (non-pornographic for those who are prone to snark), but not being terribly concerned with either privacy or speed.
In order of “ease-of-ability-to-find”:
#1: Neeva
#2 Gibiru
#3 Peekier
#4 Metager
#5 SwissCows
I have no comment about any of the others mentioned in either the article or comments
I employed the chrome, brave, yandex, and edge browers. Using the different browers, I found that the order of the list above remains the same.
And then there is the Russian search engine: https://yandex.com
Yandex. If I absolutely need to find something.
@aka.attrition – do you know if there have been any changes with Brave Browser that would make it a security risk? I know that the lead guy that started it was booted from Mozilla because he sent a contribution to a CA bill that was not ‘woke’. Brave is supposed to be a preferred browser for more security relating to data collection, correct?