Google reCAPTCHA with almost every search

[Gemmaugr]

it's still a Bing frontend in the end..

Almost all alternative search engines are fronts for one of the main search indices, in whole or in part.

Indeed, which is why I said:

I've tested all the real independent index search sites (Stract, Greppr, Wiby, Yep, Marginalia, Alexiandria[Cert dead] RightDao [Dead], InfoTiger[Dead], Gigablast[Dead]), and Brave is sadly the best I've found. There are a loooot of google and bing frontends though, which is often mistaken for being independent.

Mojeek not included because it was touched upon earlier.

DDG appears to have matured, and now uses its own index instead of Bing: a pleasant development.

While they do have their own index, most of the results is still supplied by Bing.

[Goodydino]

I've tested all the real independent index search sites (Stract, Greppr, Wiby, Yep, Marginalia, Alexiandria[Cert dead] RightDao [Dead], InfoTiger[Dead], Gigablast[Dead]), and Brave is sadly the best I've found. There are a loooot of google and bing frontends though, which is often mistaken for being independent.

Yep sounds suspicious. On a summary for it, I read this comment: "When you search with Yep, you’re putting actual dollars in the pockets of your favorite content creators." That sounds like spyware.

[Mæstro]

Berners-Lee is right. Commerce has ruined the web, just like everything else it touches. The fact that some feel the need for such awkward structures at all attests to how the existing order (in all countries) fails to secure authors’ material interests:

Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Although this is normally interpreted as the mandate for copyright, that fails just as abysmally. Even letting the phrase content creator displace traditional forms like artist, author is an insult to the subjects concerned. Creative works are not fungible. Lumping any written or drawn work which might interest me, be it academic or literary, into an indefinite mass only makes sense to the businessman who stands to gain by claiming as much of others’ attention as he can. Stylists have always warned about copying marketers’ jargon, and their warnings are sound. I pay my favourite artist direct, for I enjoy his drawings and wish him sustained as he draws it. Profit never enters into it. We should not speak as if it ought.

[andyprough]

While DDG (search, not browser...) does have that going for Pale Moon, it's still a Bing frontend in the end.. https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help- ... ts/sources

I'm aware of the Bing results in DDG (along with their own results - my understanding is it's a complex mix). DDG also uses Apple Maps for their maps. But I'm not being tracked when I use the frontend by Microsoft or Apple, so I'm not sure the issue.

As far as quality of results, I find DDG to be completely sufficient except maybe once every 2-3 months when I pull up Startpage to see if I can find something from Startpage's google results that I can't find from DDG. However I do understand that my experience in terms of quality is completely subjective and that people's views of the quality of DDG results vs google's vary widely.

[Gemmaugr]

While DDG (search, not browser...) does have that going for Pale Moon, it's still a Bing frontend in the end.. https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help- ... ts/sources

I'm aware of the Bing results in DDG (along with their own results - my understanding is it's a complex mix). DDG also uses Apple Maps for their maps. But I'm not being tracked when I use the frontend by Microsoft or Apple, so I'm not sure the issue.

As far as quality of results, I find DDG to be completely sufficient except maybe once every 2-3 months when I pull up Startpage to see if I can find something from Startpage's google results that I can't find from DDG. However I do understand that my experience in terms of quality is completely subjective and that people's views of the quality of DDG results vs google's vary widely.

I can relate. I used to use DDG search all the time (after using google search for a short while when it was new..and yahoo before that) before Brave search got up and running. It's not so much a choice due to the results, but more about distancing myself from as much Big Tech/GAFAM/FAANG as I can (and privacy concerns in general).

[Mæstro]

However I do understand that my experience in terms of quality is completely subjective and that people's views of the quality of DDG results vs google's vary widely.

Much of it surely depends also on the sorts of queries one is giving. This can apply in many distinct ways. A crude example would be how incompetent users who submit whole sentences as queries get better results from Google, which caters to them, than a search engine which expects the mature user to use traditional keywords. Some topics are more prone to commercial, LLM-generated and other sorts of nonsense cluttering results. Try to look up older botanical terms online, and you shall mostly find Indian school revision sites plagiarising one another.

[Gemmaugr]

However I do understand that my experience in terms of quality is completely subjective and that people's views of the quality of DDG results vs google's vary widely.

Much of it surely depends also on the sorts of queries one is giving. This can apply in many distinct ways. A crude example would be how incompetent users who submit whole sentences as queries get better results from Google, which caters to them, than a search engine which expects the mature user to use traditional keywords. Some topics are more prone to commercial, LLM-generated and other sorts of nonsense cluttering results. Try to look up older botanical terms online, and you shall mostly find Indian school revision sites plagiarising one another.

Sadly, not many search sites honors traditional parameters anymore. Not even Brave adequately allows the use of a simple - (minus) terms. It makes everything so much harder to find.