I am sure there is a good reason for this. I am looking for alternatives to google, and these to be the ones that pop-up most often.

RESOLVED: I used up my 100 searches in kagi pretty quickly, and the experience was really nice. I am quite anti-subscription, so I won’t continue using it. I eliminated brave from my search due to the crypto stuff and whatnot. I am now using mojeek, which gave me better results over DDG when searching for niche stuff. Also I like mojeeks interface a lot more.

  • talentedkiwi@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    3 小时前

    You may want to reconsider your stance on subscriptions if you’re looking to degoogle and go towards more privacy. General stance in the community (if I remember right) is that if you’re not paying for the product, YOU are the product. Meaning they will likely be sharing more information, even if inadvertently through ad networks and whatnot.

  • tirateimas@lemmy.pt
    0·
    5 小时前

    de-googling is a process, it won’t be perfect for a long time. No matter what many comments say, just starting with one or two things is already huge.

    Both DDG and Brave Search are already an improvement. Go with the choice that causes the least resistance and then keep improving from there, as long as it works for you.

    Striving for ideological perfection is a dead-end.

  • banana_pie@piefed.zipEnglish
    0·
    7 小时前

    I’ll share my unpopular stance. You can use Brave search from any browser, I use it with Librewolf. This way I get independent web index without any crypto-bro shit. So what is advantage over using DDG? Its that they actually have their own index so its not just a front for some megacorp.

    When I was looking around for web search Kagi and Mojeek weren’t as good. Maybe that is changed now. What I do know is that Google that I have on my work machine doesn’t perform any better than Brave.

  • Twongo [she/her]@lemmy.ml
    0·
    8 小时前

    Brave is some Crypto-Bro stuff, i’d go with DDG or Kagi. At some point you could get a Junk-PC and run SearXNG on it

  • Reannlegge@lemmy.ca
    0·
    9 小时前

    I do not want to be vilified for saying this, so I will echo what everyone else seems to be suggesting of DDG being a good degoogled search engine.

    When I started to degoogle, personally do not remember what I was using DDG and ecosia probably. I hear ecosia has jumped into the AI game which I think is icky for what they are trying to do.

    I later started getting into home labbing. I am in no way suggesting that you should jump into that right now, this is a rather expensive lifestyle, it starts with one project and you think oh fun what can I replace next? So the search engine I use now is searXNG, which I have set to pull from Bing, wikiepedia, and a bunch of smaller engines. I am just trying to say there are options for you to look into in the future. Not right now you are just getting out of the Google ecosystem

    • Spite_By_Design_LLC@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      0·
      5 小时前

      So the search engine I use now is searXNG

      Ah you think darkness is your ally? You merely adopted the dark.

      Heh, just making a silly joke. As a home labber, I imagine you’re well across YaCy, so am just name dropping if for the newbies. Yacy, Hister etc etc.

      Personally, I find myself either going directly to the sites I want, using RSS feeds or (gasp!) using my local LLM agents with MCP adapters, with something like Exa to fetch the info I want (or directly via PubMed etc).

      More and more, I am mirroring the stuff I need offline, so that I can point my pet clankers at my local files, Kiwix archives, Recoll etc and then just one-click them open.

  • xmrlist@lemmy.world
    0·
    10 小时前

    A few separate reasons usually sit behind that recommendation:

    • Track record. DDG has been around since 2008 with the same simple model: ads matched to the search term, not to a profile of you. Brave Search only launched in 2021.
    • Trust in the company. Brave’s browser was caught in 2020 quietly adding its own affiliate codes to some crypto exchange URLs, and its ad model is tied to its own token. Plenty of people never forgave that. DDG had its own stumble in 2022 (its browser allowed some Microsoft trackers under a search deal, since reversed), so neither is spotless.
    • It works anywhere. DDG is just a search engine you can set in any browser; Brave Search is often conflated with the Brave browser.

    The point in Brave’s favour is independence: it runs its own index, while DDG’s results mostly come from Bing. If that matters most to you, Brave Search or Mojeek is the better pick. For someone just starting to de-google, either one is a big step up, and the browser and the accounts you stay logged into matter more than which of the two you choose.

  • Azazel@lemmy.ml
    0·
    10 小时前

    Brave is a crypto bro sham that blocks external ads just to insert their own

    • AverageDummy@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      10 小时前

      Meaning? Do they force you to use crypto services? In my time using them I have not encountered ads.

      • Duckwingthegoose@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        10 小时前

        No, and you can turn them off in settings. I use brave browser. No one is perfect, you gotta pick and choose what is acceptable to you or not when getting into the prigsfy/security realm. If you try to find perfection, you won’t.

        For search, I use kagi. I love it. Worth the couple of bucks a month IMO. Free to try with some amount of searches a month on the free plan so you can just go fuck around and see if it is worth it for you too