I’m generally pretty happy with the results in Qwant.
The main thing I miss at this point is really support for !bangs. I use them all the time in DuckDuckGo, to search directly in !scholar or !wiki. Especially in Qwant there are some features missing, so if I for example want to be lazy and use the search bar as a calculator it would be nice to be able to search for
!ddg 2+2.But that’s a minor criticism. For the most part it’s a great tool, and I look forward to where they go with their own indexes.
Edit: Also, what’s up with this graphic suggesting search engines (if you can call them that) as alternatives to Google Chrome.
In Firefox (other browsers probably as well) you can add custom keywords for searches. For example visit Wikipedia, right click the search field and pick “add keyword” from the menu. As keyword enter “!wiki” or whatever you want and from now on you can just type “!wiki whatever” in the URL bar, no need to take the detour to duckduckgo or some other search engine.
Thanks!! I should have done that ages ago!
Me too! Just added:
- !w for Wikipedia
- !wt for Wiktionary
- !wm for Wikimedia Commons
- !mar for Marginalia-Search
- !mo for Mojeek
Will probably think of a few more over the next few weeks.
@snuggledick
I’ve shortened it to “w” wikipedia, “g” Google, “d” duckduck, “a” amazon. Also possible with “1”,“2”,…Typing " w Fediverse" will directly open wikipedia with the article for “Fediverse”.
Even when you have abandoned the pages above it will work with your free pages too.
At least desktop Firefox has something similar. Add a bookmark for e.g. “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s” with the keyword “wiki”, then when you type “wiki qwant” into the address bar you’ll get the Wikipedia page.
I guess it’s easier if you don’t have to bookmark each search first, but at least for sites you search often I don’t see the need for search engine provided bangs.
edit: As mentioned in another comment, there’s a newer way where you just right-click a search box and go to “add keyword”.
I knew about this in theory, but I used DuckDuckGo for a long time and got too spoiled to a point where it didn’t occur to me to just set it up myself.
Thank you for connecting the dots for me, I’ll set ut up right away.
Giving it a try at the moment, doesn’t seem too bad
Why does this sharepic look like the Windows XP installer?
It still uses Bing (Microsoft) as its backend, as far as I can tell. I know they want to partner with Ecosia to build something less… USA-dependent but I doubt that will happen overnight.
Is there a better alternative? Seems like all the alternative search engine rely on Bing or Google anyway
Mojeek is probably the closest thing right now to a normal-looking search engine that is completely independent from Google and Bing. UK based.
Thank you
- Full EU search (not just a front-end): no idea.
- EU front-end to US search engines, I would suggest Startpage as well as Qwant, I mean.
- Independant and ad-free tracking-free innovative search engine but made in USA and also not free: Kagi. It’s the one I’ve been using for almost two years, next to Qwant and to Startpage ;)
As stated in another comment
Startpage is owned by System1, an American Internet advertising company.
I did not know that. Thx!
They’ll start with the German and French web, so if you’re searching in English you’ll probably have to wait for a while indeed.
I miss the time limits. They only have for last day, week and month. I used a lot the last year or 2 past years (they have custom date table) like Google has, and i go back to DuckDuckGo when i need more recent information but not that limited of one month.
Question for the Ecosia fans in the audience - The “we plant trees with ad revenue” is pretty cool, but they’re just a front end for Google (or Bing), yeah?
If so, isn’t their whole “we’re green” thing misleading? Does it really support EU interests if the backend is still US?
They and Qwant are working together to create their own index
Hey, that’s cool! I hope they can keep up the environmental message as they wean off Google/MS. Have they given a timeframe on when they hope to implement it? Seems like a huge task.
Not exactly misleading since they do donate money to plant trees, that’s the only claim they make.
Yes, they use Google/Bing frontend, but they have also shown interest in changing by teaming up with Qwant to build an EU-based indexer.
I don’t use Ecosia BTW, I use Qwant, but I’m trying to be fair here.
That’s a fair point, “misleading” might’ve been a poor choice of words, but - one of the points on their page reads
“Our solar panels produce enough energy to power your searches twice over, meaning more renewables (and fewer fossil fuels) in the energy grid.”
So fair enough, they’re offsetting enough to power the connection from their users to Google/MS; I just thought this quote (and their home page in general) glossed over their reliance on those 3rd parties to “do the dirty work”, so to speak.
I understand your view. It’s just, I don’t see what other choice they have/had.
Search engine backends are remarkably scarce, and very expensive to run. And if you’re trying to build a front-end search engine today, you’re pretty much limited to:
- Google (US)
- Bing (US)
- Baidu (China)
- Sogou (China)
- Mojeek (UK)
- Yandex (Russia)
Between these choices, and before the US decided to become a fascist state, realistically which of these engines made more sense to pick? Being honest. US tech has always been seen as trustworthy and the golden standard for all things tech, until very recently.
Sure, they could also use metasearch engines, but those are remarkably consumer-UNfriendly and would require tweaking beyond the capabilities of the common tech company.
The only thing I cannot explain here is why they didn’t use Mojeek as their backend, and here we can only speculate…
Maybe it would have made Ecosia financially inviable if they had to pay for their API. Maybe they were concerned Mojeek’s finances were too uninspiring compared to the colossal capacities that Google/Microsoft have.
Or maybe they thought people didn’t want to have a radically different experience in results from what they are used to, and so decided to basically just give these two platforms a green makeover and promise to plant some trees. I don’t know.
My point is, I wouldn’t necessarily hold it against them. If anything, I am glad they agreed to join forces with Qwant in building a true EU-based search engine. Its sad that it took us so long to realise we need the basic infrastructure that other big economies have, but I suppose better late than ever.
I’m optimistic.
I mainly use Startpage, also a
europeansearch engine (like qwant it uses microsoft/google search in the backend)Edit: as nuko pointed out: they are owned by an american company
Startpage is owned by System1, an American Internet advertising company.
Pain didnt knew that, guess I’m switching back to Qwant, thanks for the info!
Any reason I should choose Qwant over Duckduckgo? DDG having bangs and Qwant being not hosted in the US means I see them as about equal. So I won’t bother changing. Anything else I’m missing that Qwant beats DDG in that might make it worth changing.
(I’m definitely gonna change if the index thing works out)
Qwant is building their own index, while DDG is using Bing’s (Microsoft) index. I haven’t tried Qwant yet, but I guess that would make a noticeable difference.
Yeah. I mentioned that in my comment at the bottom.
