So I’ve tried out a few search engines but no matter where I look I can’t find a great answer.
- Qwant was decent for a bit but as I eventually found out they don’t use their own index.
- SearXNG, same as above.
- Mojeek was one of the first I went with but I often can’t find what I’m looking for when using it.
- Wikipedia gives me YaCy, Exalead, Opensearch, Gigablast, and Elasticsearch but either I can’t find the URL’s for them or they require I install something on my computer.
What did you all end up picking? And does it even matter if the back-end is American owned, do American companies make money from that (or does that give them inordinate control)?
Kagi is a different approach, but it’s also American so it doesn’t help here. Many AI LLMs are effectively hyper optimized search engines, and there are at least non-US controlled LLMs you can try. But for traditional web search, the entire world was happy to let Google dominate the space, while Microsoft spent billions to chase a distant second place. There is very little oxygen left for any other competitors and the remaining slice of the pie is so small and the barrier to entry so high it’s basically impossible for anyone else to be effective nevermind profitable.
Edit: It’s also worth mentioning the EU is trying to do something about this but in typical European bureaucratic/academic fashion I can’t make heads or tails of what exactly they want to do and frankly it doesn’t sound like they know either, probably in a few decades they’ll have built something really impressive.