Many “alternative” search engines are better for privacy, but they are still vulnerable to censorship, because they rely on g**gle and m*crosoft’s indices for their search results. This isn’t a deep-hidden secret either, many of them disclose what search index they use on the “about” page, for example:
- https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/
- https://support.startpage.com/hc/en-us/articles/5138782571796-Why-isn-t-a-particular-site-appearing-in-the-results
- https://www.ecosia.org/privacy
There are still search engines that (claim to) maintain their own index. Most surprisingly, br*ve:
Why not? It’s a tool you sometimes use dozens of time in a single day.
I mean this is the entire problem. You were used to free searches, we all were. But It wasn’t free. We are dealing with the repercussions now. So now you can pay to have a search engine that doesn’t give you those repercussions if you value it. If you don’t then of course $120 a year doesn’t make sense. That means you keep using Google search, or a free competitor like DDG. But to complain about the quality dropping and disregard for privacy or whatever bone you have to pick with Google and then be unwilling to spend $.30 USD a day on a concrete solution? I’m not sure what you want here.