this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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I've been doing a lot of reading about DDG since this dropped and ad blocking, a major privacy factor, was not included, and simply, I don't trust DDG anymore. If they were willing to disregard user privacy once, chances are they'll do it again. Hell, I'd bet they already are.
I think Duck Duck Go has been doomed to be subservient to Microsoft's whims ever since Google blocked them from aggregating search results from Google's index. Now the only way to run a private search engine is to use a private index like Xng or Metager. Of those, I'd rexommens Xng
I've had a private SearXNG instance for about a year. Never going back, if you want no ads and to not be tracked by your searches it's the way to go. I host it on a cloud server to further remove myself from being tracked via IP. It's pretty easy to spin one up and I highly recommend it.
Here's what my page looks like when I search
How do you feel about paid search like Kagi? I’ve been using it and think it’s great. No tracking, apparently.
I haven't even heard of it so I don't have an opinion on it. If it works for you then great! Technically my private searxng is a paid service since I host it in the cloud but it does have the option to be free if you host it locally.
I'll also add, with a private instance of searxng you know for a fact nothing is getting saved.
Great qualities, I'll give it a try thank you!
I pay $5 a month to host my own instance of SearXNG on a 1GB Linode server. I am in full control of the server and the source code running it since it's completely open software. I don't have to trust that Kagi is being honest and hope that one day it comes out that they did something stupid like leak my data or sell my data through some convoluted legalese change to their terms of service.
Additionally I get access to search results from Bing, Google, DuckDuckGo, and any other provider I want, all without having anything about me or my activity tied to some kind of centralized identity/payment.
I like the sound of it! Kagi is working well for me, but will consider trying this out very soon.