I apologize if this is old news, but I just noticed it. It looks like Kagi has added Fediverse Forums as a default Web search option.
this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2025
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What non-american search engine do you use?
https://metager.org/ is run by a German non-profit. Since late last year it's pay to use because their advertising partner (Yahoo) cancelled their contract without warning. But it's cheaper than Kagi. Also the non-profit is part of the project that's building the European OpenWebIndex ( https://ows.eu/ ) that's releasing this year.
As a former Kagi user (quit all my US company subscriptions recently in order to support EU) I've now used Startpage for a month and it has been great so far.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startpage.com
I write questions on bathroom stalls and then check back in on them every few days.
Why are you using Grindr Classic for search?
For the personalized results, ofc
Man, this is so random and hilarious. I genuinely laughed so hard.
And then you write your own (wrong) answers below it in a different hand writing and pen. And call it SEO.
That was you?
Well then, in answer to your last question scrawled in the Kansas City Walmart bathroom, yes, you should definitely get that checked out by a medical professional.
Not working, the only response I get is penis
That's internet for you.
I ask friends who are more intelligent than me
And if they don't know I assume it is forbidden knowledge that would drive me mad to know
(I am only half joking)
Qwant. It's French.
It uses Bing in the backend though.
Yes, but not fully. They have their own index as well. They have also recently started a partnership with Ecosia to focus more on that effort.
And Qwant is really great! Have been using og for a couple of years, and have no need to fall back to Google, DDG etc.
Was gonna say that.
Mojeek
Startpage.com
Better than qwant in my opinion.
Still uses Google as an index so you're just giving them money indirectly.
Alternative?
They're all based on others indexes to be honest so there isn't really one.
DuckDuckGo is Bing, Startpage is Google, Kagi is seemingly a mishmash of a bunch of search engines (including the Russian owned Yandex) Brave is independent but owned and run by assholes so that isn't much better.
Personally I like Kagi enough and it's independent enough for me to pay for it.
That's the problem, really. They all have pros and cons.
Kagi is American, so they are out for me. So is DuckDuckGo.
I don't care if startpage uses the Google index, since Google isn't profiting from my data or from ads.
Their servers are in the EU, and the balance between privacy and usable results is good enough.
I see it like using a third-party front end for YouTube. All of the benefits with none of the risks or private data theft.
Search engine? I started rawdoging urls a while ago.
The internet is increasingly more useless, the sites i really need are bookmarked anyway.
And I like swiss cheese on my ham sandwiches. Oh, sorry, I thought we were just saying non sequitors.
In all seriousness, that is not an answer to the question. Yes, some (often older) people will always use a search engine to find the same website they browse all the time. But search engines are also incredibly valuable for finding new things or verifying claims. I have a bookmark for the Warframe wiki but that doesn't help me when I want to research different monitor energy efficiencies or find a repair guide for my toaster oven.
And while people CAN collect a set of (searchable) websites for different topics they are interested in... that is how we got into (one of) our current mess(es). How many people just use reddit for everything and thus make themselves vulnerable to corporate shittery and misinformation campaigns.
That's three paragraphs of "I took this serious."
Oh- oh!
That's, uh... A sentence!
Did i win?
You got the rawdog, mate! Congo rats.
Works best when you've got a web ring or other friendly community of contributors to reference against one another.
But those are few and fair between in the modern day.
Instead of bookmarks I use the "share to Standard Notes" option. It names the note after the link, saves the link, allows you to write a summary or tags, and makes it all searchable so it is findable later rather than disappearing like a needle in a haystack.
Does anyone use yacy?
I tried, years ago, I think their federated approach to building a database and crawling are cool - but at least the last time I checked, the actual search algorithm was just too bad. It often gave me completely irrelevant results and seemed very susceptible to spam sites gaming Search Engine Optimisation.
Yeah I had it crawl a site I knew was mostly unique. Left for a day and searched, nothing. I had to give it the entire url for it to pop up with anything...
Search is actually something that is kinda hard to get right. I just dont like having so many sites that are just small holes into google/microsoft/etc...search engines. I was hoping there was something out there that works.
I've used Yacy for years. It's very customizeable and gives good results, and I like that I can curate, to some degree, what it finds. Biggest drawback is that I don't always feel like starting up a server to do a search.