this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2025
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I stopped using Google at the same time I closed my accounts with Facebook, instagram, Reddit and Amazon. Currently I'm using Ecosia which I think is German. I’m dumping all the US companies I can based on all the Trump crap. It is taking time and effort but I should be able to actually close the Google account soon and I replaced windows with Linux on all but one of my PCs.
Ecosia still uses American services though - they use Google, Bing, Yahoo and Wikipedia for search results.
95+% of all websites you visit are hosted on AWS or use Cloudflare.
But that's their decision, not yours.
Do you have a source for that? I think it's nowhere near 95% of sites given there's several major providers that aren't AWS or Cloudflare (eg Hetzner, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, Wordpress.com, and a bunch more)
ecosia is developing their own engine apparently
I hope that goes well for them. It's hard and extremely expensive, which is why there's so few good search engines and half of them just use Bing's API.
Yeah but don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Among other things, they just recently announced that they're starting to build an alternative index with Qwant.
I'm using Qwant, used Ecosia before. Really OK for most stuff. I still revert to googling occasionally - mainly for local businesses on maps and sometimes shopping results. But I agree, don't let perfect be the enemy of good, well said.
Google maps is still the best for looking up local businesses and reviews. I wish people would go back to using a modern version of yellow pages.
In Ecosia's settings you can set it to primarily use Google results instead of Bing. Makes it a lot more enjoyable to use.
You're right but it's still important to point out in this case since an American index would be subject to any American censorship law. It's better to use Ecosia than Google for sure but we still gotta be aware of the type of bias we're working with.
Definitely true. I'll have to try it out. Is Ecosia better than DuckDuckGo or Kagi?
Late to reply but: from what I heard, Kagi is really good at search (at least when it comes to filters and the such, not sure about base results), but it's paid so that's a disadvantage (and also a plus since you don't get ads nor is your data being sold off), and it's US based. DuckDuckGo also uses Bing but I guess they have more sources than just them. In my experience it's about the same, maybe a bit better on DDG, both have shebangs (! for DDG, # for Ecosia) which I find extremely useful.
I've never heard of Ecosia, but I don't understand your logic on this.
Problem: Google bad!
Solution: Don't use google, use Ecosia instead.
Error: Ecosia also uses google.
How is this a good move? If anything it's just a lateral move with the same problem.
Late reply but: Ecosia lets you choose between Google or Bing, but I guess that isn't really your point. The main thing is it anonymises your searches, so you do get some additional privacy. Additionally, the hope is that one day they build their own index. They just recently announced that they're gonna start one with Qwant.
Eventually they'll stop using G and MAYBE they have better impact in the climate. Why be a fucking prick about it?
What about DuckDuckGo?
At this point Bing is better than Google, so using a privacy based skin of Bing seems like a good idea.
Same here! Loved the switch to Linux.
I wouldn't say dogshit, I would say the results are good enough for most purposes, not great, my priority just as the moment is dumping USA based companies and I thought Ecosia planting trees was a nice touch. Although as someone else pointed out it is still possibly using crawlers from google and bing in the background. I'm still keen to try out other search engines.