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.
lowleveldata@programming.dev 8 months ago
I use Kagi. At least I’m the one paying.
mynamesnotrick@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
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.
lowleveldata@programming.dev 8 months ago
It is better than ddg and Brave, that much I can say. Brave especially have been shit recently.
mynamesnotrick@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
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.
Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
Didn’t Google nuke SearX? Or did they only nuke public instances?
mynamesnotrick@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
Google results work fine for me on my home instance:
Image
herrcaptain@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
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.
rasakaf679@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
If you are naive enough to believe that they are not collecting your data. Good for you and your peace of mind.
lowleveldata@programming.dev 8 months ago
I feel like it’s a good way to get sued if you straight up lie to paying customers
Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
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?
tesseract@beehaw.org 8 months ago
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.