The original post: /r/privacy by /u/AkashicBird on 2024-09-30 09:48:33.

I don’t know much about anything, but lately I’ve been looking into and comparing a lot of options. If you exclude the obvious ones to avoid (Google, Bing) and the paid ones, you end up with alternatives such as DDG, Brave, Swisscows, Luxxle, Mojeek, Qwant, Searx, and Startpage.

Luxxle and Mojeek do not offer search by time (e.g., last month, last year, etc.).

DDG, Brave, Mojeek, and Qwant all have some controversies surrounding them (various allegations, bias).

Startpage and Searx use Google or Bing but in a “safer” way. Still, I find it strange to continue using Google; it feels like being too attached to their monopoly. We need actual alternatives.

I’m currently using Brave search, but I really feel that there isn’t a search engine with truly unbiased search results (although I need to find a reliable way to compare results for this, I’ve only been quickly comparing a few results. If anyone has suggestions for searches that could clearly show bias or highlight low-quality sites with “paid” recommendations at the top—where people pay to be featured prominently, making the list less “honest”—I would appreciate it.)

I guess the answer is basically “use any of those, it’s better than using google or bing”, but I still stand on the fact that using those in less direct ways with starpage and searx feels odd to me.