What alternatives do you all use? I like DuckDuckGo but it still depends on existing engines behind the scenes. There is also Quant and SearX but I haven’t used either much.
Surely there is some foss project that has been promising, somewhere?
Surely there is some foss project that has been promising, somewhere?
The internet badly needs a big alternative search engine that isn’t beholden to advertisers or dependent on a single corporate owner.
The benefit of such a search engine (whose main incentive is to just be a good search engine) is obvious for the public, but would also give companies who rely on their own OS leverage against Google.
Paid by user search? Discourage curiosity or just using the alternative.
Deep pocketed sponsor? They have the control now.
User donations are the biggest "maybe" I can see which would be not worse but depends upon charity and campaigning to some degree.
If companies like Apple and Microsoft care about providing a great user experience, Google search is risky. I think users would prefer not to see ads when they search, or worry about Google harvesting their data. If this is so, it might be worth it to fund some sort of independent “search foundation.”
I reckon a simple text-only search engine – like Google before it jumped the shark – would actually be quite cheap to develop and operate.
Besides the question of the funding of this hypothetical search engine. It being „fair and objective“ or even completely transparent about its ranking, would mean it‘d be SEO‘d into oblivion by everything from click/content farms to trolls to more nefarious actors. As long as many on the internet want to make money or manipulate people somehow it‘s not really doable in my opinion.
- Ads do not adversely affect customer satisfaction.
- The combined forces of Microsoft, Apple and others could not create a serviceable search engine (despite Microsoft alone having already made one).
If not, let’s just agree to disagree :)
I‘m sure they can. And, as you say, MS does already. supported with ads as well unless I‘m mistaken. Are you suggesting they offer a search engine and subsidize it. That they offer it as part of their ecosystem benefits, sort of?
I can’t disagree that users tolerate ads, since advertising is the model of plenty successful websites. It’s just that, like bundled OS crapware, the user experience is better without it.