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)?
Gigablast used to be great, but they vanished with no warning a few years ago. It was run by a small team, or maybe one guy, who posted frequently about how difficult it was to make a search engine when so many sites block them now (but don’t block Google.) So, I think maybe he just decided it wasn’t worth it anymore.