I’m exploring alternatives to Google as my search engine due to privacy concerns. I’ve heard good things about DuckDuckGo and Startpage, but I’m unsure which one to choose. Can anyone share their experiences with either of these search engines? Which one offers better privacy and search results in your opinion? Additionally, I’m curious about opinions on Safari as a search engine option. Are there any other search engines you’d recommend that prioritize privacy and provide comprehensive search functionality?
Startpage is google proxyed and duckduckgo is bing proxyed
I mostly use StartPage myself. It uses Google’s search results and in my experience they are the best. If you want the best possible privacy/usability combo, then StartPage is it IMO.
Check out Brave Search though, it’s also pretty great in my experiene.
Been using Kagi and haven’t looked back.
There is no “Safari” search engine.
I’ve tried a bunch of search engines and haven’t heard of Safari. Can’t find it when I search, and unsurprisingly Apple’s browser is in the results.
Are you saying there’s a search engine called Safari? Or are you asking which browser to use?
I like startpage better because it provides the date of the search result where Duck doesn’t.
Thank you all for your responses and advice!
On this same post on X, a person sent me this article, “DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg has announced that the search engine will begin purging all independent media outlets from the platform and will replace them with “trusted” mainstream media outlets instead.” It was “fact checked” so seems legitimate. I’m a supporter of independent news so if this is the case, it’s a hell no for me.
Anyone have thought about this or know of it’s true?
I suggest startpage instead of duckduckgo.
Firstly, startpage is a company founded in Netherlands, while duckduckgo is an American company. The laws and regulations about privacy protection in the EU is much stricter than those in the USA. For instance, duckduckgo has to obey The USA PATRIOT Act because it’s an American company. More essentially, from the perspective of the quality of searching, startpage (using the same technology as google) is much better than duckduckgo. A search engine without satisfactory and accurate results is useless even if it put priority on privacy.
Safari is the browser developed by Apple Inc., it’s not a search engine.
Startpage sucks. We are tracked by everything, every social platform, Mainstream OS-s, our phones. The worst part about current search engines is their need to support the product monetarily with sponsored crap! Every page has 75% sponsored results and they are on both the top half and the bottom half, we can’t get the actual result we want anymore.
I’ve been using DDG for the last 5 years but gave Kagi a shot for a month (Pro subscription). Many rave about Kagi, I just didn’t find it all that good, so I went back to DDG. I have used StartPage which is pretty good but tome DDG is the best balanced search engine available.
This is my setup and works well: default is safari (private mode) w/duckduckgo as engine and nextdns profile with heavy filters and proton vpn as needed.
I also use ios duckduckgo app as i like how the tabs and bookmarks are setup vs safari with auto delete tabs enabled.
My combo is duckduckgo with cromite browser plus adblock
I choose my browser using this guide (I don’t know if is up to date)
https://divestos.org/pages/browsers
I use both DuckDuckGo and Google depending on what I search. In firefox you can choose “search with (google or whatever search engine you would like)”. So what I do is, my primary is DuckDuckGo but if I could not find what I’m looking for, I turn to “search with (in my case google)”. You can choose other search engine that you prefer like Startpage (tried this before, its okay). I have not tried Safari browser.
To clarify, “Safari isn’t a standalone search engine; it’s a web browser developed by Apple Inc. that comes pre-installed on their devices like iPhones, iPads, and Mac computers. Safari does have a search feature that allows users to search the web, but it relies on various search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, and DuckDuckGo to provide search results. So, while Safari isn’t a search engine itself, it’s a browser that provides access to different search engines for conducting online searches.”
Hope that clarifies things!
first: dont worry about privacy so much. yes its important but as someone who has done a ton of research and basically worried about it for too long… unless you are doing some pretty wild and illegal shit, nobody cares.
especially if you use an adblocker.
anyway i still use google occasionally, bing is my default though and it does personalize some results but it seems to actually be beneficial - as in instead of personalizing things to advertise me, it just prioritizes websites or other things that i tend to actually click on. you can also turn personalization off - for both google and bing, as far as i know. i know you can with bing/copilot.
anyway i use firefox for my browser and that makes it simple to change with one click which search engine i search with via the url bar. i can also search wikipedia from there if i choose since pretty often thats what im actually looking for anyway, so it just saves a step.
I find Duckduckgo’s results mostly fine but use Startpage as a backup sometimes
all of them are just like google in terms of privacy. better use something like firefox brave or searX
duckduckgo gives me the best results lately. google has been giving weird results recently. if what youre trying is tricky to find yandex usually gets the trick done, since its a very good russian search engine you get a different type of political and legal biases. (yes even duckduck go is forced to hide some results)
bonus: yacy js an open source p2p search engine but you have to to take security into your own hands. I just use it because it gives obscure results and aits pretty fun to find weird hidden coners of the internet using it
search engines for me are a means to an end, so i change the search engine based on my needs.
Nop and nop.
Startpage sells your data after being bought and brave sells your data too (introducting crypto stuff and allowing trackers on facebook ex), ddg is not a saint, they allowed trackers too but at leas they are not bought by a shady company