Google and its ethical…domain?

Although Google is seen on many fronts as a villain, that has not always been the case. Especially when the company, now officially called Alphabet, used the slogan don’t be evil in reference to using user data only for ethical purposes. However, that image faded over the years until it officially disappeared in 2018.

Google’s leadership among search engines is undoubtedly meritocratic, if not entirely so. The Mountain View corporation knew how to hit the key with a service that offered much more accurate results than those of its competitors. An element that today is still awaiting what Microsoft can do with artificial intelligence in Bing.

At this point, we have implicitly mentioned one of the main reasons why Google maintains a clear dominance in the sector: the fact that it has to compete with giant corporations. Companies like Alphabet and Microsoft have huge financial resources and armies of engineers. That, of course, makes it very difficult for smaller competitors to gain a significant foothold. Unless they manage to get ahead in something and that something is a commercial success. We know that, unfortunately, the mass market is often not meritocratic when it comes to the quality of products and services.

Google has a dominant position. In addition, advertising is one of the cornerstones of the company’s business model. This has meant that its privacy policies have been criticized by many. Microsoft, the main rival with Bing, is not to be trusted either. Especially, if we see the way it has pivoted towards services with the introduction of questionable things on Windows.

Hope is not lost

Fortunately, and although they have a tough time against two of the biggest giants in the business world, over the years many alternatives have emerged that are more ethical. And that also show a greater commitment to privacy, an aspect that unfortunately is of less concern to the masses than it should be. Although privacy on the Internet is in reality an unrealistic utopia, that should not be a reason to give up and not fight to improve the current framework.

DuckDuckGo

It is the best known alternative search engines in the western half of the world. This service needs no introduction at this point. Indeed, within its context it is quite popular. It has even reached 100 million searches per day by the end of 2021.

DuckDuckGo was officially launched in 2008. It was born with the mission to change the direction of the sector. Especially with regard to a competition that was becoming less and less in the face of Google. Two years later, those responsible decided to take a turn to make a greater commitment to privacy. This reaction stemmed mainly from the growing concern about privacy. Also, the doubts that Google was already generating at the time.

Considering that privacy does not really exist on the Internet, what DuckDuckGo does is not track the user. If one accesses the website provided by the search engine without employing any kind of blocker, one will see that there is advertising. However, this is only linked to the search term entered by the user in a totally aseptic manner. That is, there is no data collection or profiling.

For a long time, it was the great champion of privacy among Internet search engines. In recent times, however, its reputation has been somewhat damaged by scandals. For example, the Microsoft trackers and the blocking of The Pirate Bay. However, the company has been developing DuckAssist, an artificial intelligence-based response mechanism, for several months now

DuckDuckGo has expanded at the product level to offer privacy-oriented web browsers. The Android app is based on Chromium. The Mac app wraps the WebKit engine used by Safari. The Windows app is also expected to do the same with Microsoft Edge. One of the search engines focused on privacy.

Qwant

Qwant is basically the European rival of DuckDuckGo. It is based in France, within the European Union. Consequently, it is directly subject to the direct application of the GDPR. This is the regulation governing the protection and processing of personal data within the EU. In a world that generally focuses too much on the strictly technological. However, it does not hurt to keep the legislation in mind when it comes to operating services over the Internet.

Qwant was officially launched in July 2013. It is also committed to respecting privacy. To this end, it does not track users for the purpose of displaying targeted advertising or selling their personal data. In short, nothing new. Although, it has a European touch that possibly makes it more attractive than other options with similar characteristics.

An interesting detail of Qwant is that it allied with Mozilla Foundation for the development of web browsers based on Firefox. This has resulted in apps for Android and iOS that internally work very differently. This because Apple prohibits the use of other rendering engines in its mobile operating system. I am glad to say that it seems like it won’t be around for much longer.

One of the weak points of this search engine is that it is not officially operational in numerous countries.

Brave Search

And now we jump to Brave Search. We are talking about a much younger exponent than those mentioned so far. In fact, the company responsible for developing the largest Chromium derivative, which is released as free software, launched it in 2021. One can therefore imagine a privacy-centric approach and some originality. Recall that the most prominent feature of the web browser is that it pays you to view advertising.

Brave Search is an independent search engine. Or at least it tries to be as much as possible, since it got rid of Bing’s influence recently. Besides that, it tries to avoid spam and low-quality content and has a paid premium plan that eliminates advertising and avoids public IP harvesting.

Other noteworthy features include Discussions. This feature shows conversations related to the search query as comments posted on Reddit. It also offers Goggles, a feature that allows users to apply their own rules and filters to a search. Finally, there is Summarizer, a summary function powered by Brave’s own artificial intelligence.

Brave intends to drive an ecosystem of products and services in order to gain users and be sustainable. The browser is currently set by default in the web browser of the same name. Additionally, you can set it in others such as Firefox, Chrome, and Edge by following the standard procedure.

Yandex

According to Statcounter data, Yandex is the third most popular web browser in the world, after Google and Bing. It is also closely followed by Yahoo. This may be mainly due to the fact that it is the most used search engine in its home country, Russia. There it has about 60% share. It is also popular in other countries, mainly in Asia, including Turkey, Belarus, China, and Uzbekistan. As we can see, this is a search engine whose main audience is in countries close to Russia. In fact, there are many who see Yandex as an answer to Google by the historical enemy/rival of the United States.

When you enter the website that gives access to the search engine, the user will see an indication about the weather in a location near his or her own. In addition, they will also see links to game services, images, video, weather, maps, and e-mail. It is capable of indexing content in many formats, but possibly most notably indexing text located within Flash Shockwave objects.

SearXNG

And we close the list of top mentions with SearXNG, an improved fork of Searx. To be more specific, it is actually a metasearch engine that aggregates results from other popular search engines. Similarly, it does not store user information on a remote server. This, far from being a compromise in order to look good to the public, is materialized by the fact that it works in loco. Therefore, the user will have to follow a series of somewhat advanced steps and meet certain requirements to have it running.

Of course, not everyone may find SearXNG suitable, but those who have concerns about using remote servers can try it out and see if it meets their requirements. Additionally, SearXNG’s source code is available on GitHub under the AGPLv3 license, making it free software

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Bing has recently been revamped to offer a more personalized, faster and more visual search experience. Some advantages Bing has over Google are:

Image search engine

Bing has an image search engine that many users consider superior to Google. Bing allows you to filter images by size, color, type, license, and design. In addition, it displays an enlarged preview of images. Simply hover over them and it offers suggestions related to the search.

Featured image

Bing shows every day a featured image on its home page. This is usually very spectacular and related to an interesting event or place. In addition, the image also includes additional information and links to other related searches. This feature makes Bing’s homepage more attractive and varied than Google’s.

Different algorithm

Bing has a different algorithm than Google. This means that it offers different results for the same search. This can be an advantage if you want to get a different perspective. In addition to finding information that Google does not show. For example, Bing tends to give more relevance to local sites and social networks.

Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing offers a free tool for webmasters called Bing Webmaster Tools. This allows you to analyze and optimize the performance of websites in the search engine. This tool has some advantages over Google’s tool. For example, it displays an SEO report with the most prominent problems of the website and suggests how to correct them.

Bing Rewards

Bing has a program called Bing Rewards. Accordingly, it rewards users for using the search engine with points. These can be redeemed for gift cards, subscriptions, or donations to charities. In addition, this is a way to incentivize the use of Bing and build user loyalty.

There are other advantages to using Bing as well.

• Bing offers a more visual and interactive image and video search. In the same way, includes options like filters, slideshows, infographics, etc.
• Bing integrates better with social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. In consequence, it shows you relevant posts and tweets in your search results.
• Bing rewards you with points for using its services. In addition, you can redeem them for gift cards or donations.
• Bing has more privacy options than Google. In fact, it allows you to delete your search history or disable personalized ads.
• Bing uses a more powerful artificial intelligence technology than ChatGPT. This technology can also better understand natural language queries and provide more accurate answers.

Bing’s AI technology is based on a more advanced version of ChatGPT. This is a large linguistic model capable of generating natural language text. In addition, Bing uses this technology to better understand your queries and provide more relevant and accurate answers. On the other hand, Bing also has a new chat window that can help you with various tasks such as shopping, travel, games, etc. Bing’s AI technology is also integrated into the Windows 11 taskbar, making it easier for you to access it.

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The best alternatives to Google

A search engine and a search engine are not the same thing. Consequently, in this list of the best alternatives to Google, there are fewer search engines than search engines. Indeed, many search engines are based on other search engines. For example, Yahoo relies on Bing to deliver its results. However, it offers a different service than the one provided by the Microsoft search engine.

Bing

Bing is Microsoft’s alternative to Google. Moreover, in terms of market share, it ranks second behind it. However, its share is still far from representing a serious threat to the Mountain View giant. Unlike Google’s appearance, which is characterized by its sobriety, Bing is displayed with a colorful background that keeps changing. In addition, it has a bar at the bottom with current contents that may be relevant to the user. On the other hand, at the top it has a bar that allows you to switch between the typical search or focus on images, videos, maps, and news among others.

Bing incorporates its functions to differentiate itself from the competition. For example, text translator or grammar checker. The results page, however, is almost identical to the one offered by Google.

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo, at the design level, is more similar to Google. Its page is characterized by its flat background in a single color and the search bar, with no major decorations. However, its greatest virtue is that its focus is on user privacy. Unlike Google, it does not store users’ search history on its servers. Nor does it offer personalization based on our interests and Internet activity. It is a hybrid search engine. That is, it uses its crawler and an API of the main search engines present on the Internet. For example, Bing and Yandex, among others.

DuckDuckGo has one ad per search, but it is not based on our history, but on that search itself. Privacy is protected to the maximum through a proxy. Moreover, it is a free software project. It is certainly a powerful alternative, but it protects users’ personal information and, therefore, their privacy to a greater extent. We know that this is one of the main reasons why users abandon the use of Google.

Yahoo Search

With Yahoo Search, we are back to an elementary interface. The logo, the search bar and that’s it. However, the search bar is accompanied by icons that allow access to sections of food, stock market, news, and others. Although the result is powered by Bing, the visual experience is Yahoo’s own.

Regarding privacy, it is not at the level of DuckDuckgo. However, it is still more private than Google. It also offers special results to know the weather forecast, or to know the business hours of businesses that are near us. In this, it is similar to Google. In conclusion, it is not as complete as the popular search engine, but it offers similar features as well as more respect for the user’s privacy.

Yandex

It is certainly not the most popular alternative to Google, but it certainly deserves a chance. It is known as the Google of Russia because it comes from there. Its main page offers the typical search bar, but it also has specific buttons to access videos, images, maps, and other advanced queries. A marked difference with Google is that the results pages are displayed with a bit more rich content.

When searching in any web page we will see that the name, the URL address, the description, and also an icon of the same one that helps us to navigate faster through the results. In social networks, for example, the profile image appears next to the search results. In addition, it also has its browser with the same name. Just as Google does with Chrome.

You.com

We want to close this list with a recent but also very original bet. Indeed, Google and others on this list use crawlers that are in charge of indexing websites and algorithms that anticipate what users need. However, you.com breaks this paradigm. Thus, they aim to make web searches less dependent on advertising and SEO guidelines and give users more control over their Internet searches.

You.com is a search engine that launched its first beta version in November 2021. Its use stands out for its interface and some exclusive functionalities. As for its appearance, it is far from the one traditionally shown by the most popular search engines, which display a list of all the links related to your search. However, this search engine displays the results in the form of cards organized by sources and grouped in a series of specific categories such as web results, images, videos, news and social networks. In this last section you will see results from platforms such as Wikipedia, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn.

Privacy is everything!

Another of the main features of you.com is that it does not display advertising in its search results. However, it is not ruled out that in the future they will show advertising that respects privacy. Precisely, another strong point is privacy. Since its developers claim to be safer than Google and DuckDuckGo. Consequently, by activating the private mode, it never stores your preferences, queries, and locations.

This search engine also does not use trackers such as Google Analytics and only uses cookies to personalize your search profile and not to track your Internet activity. Of course, in private mode, no cookies of any kind are used. To start using you.com, we simply have to access its website. In addition, you can add their extension for Google and derivatives to use as default search engine. Although it is still in beta mode, it is a great option to consider.

Ultimately, we have looked at the top search engine alternatives to Google. Of course there are many more options, but we consider these to be the best. See you soon!

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Metager is a privacy-focused search engine.

When searching on the internet we can use several engines. Obviously, the best known is Google. However, there are many others. They are also oriented to the privacy of users, avoiding the leakage of information. Since the search can reveal information such as our location. This is precisely what Metager avoids. Since it is strongly focused on privacy. Available under the GNU license, it promises not to share the user’s IP address or search history. In addition, it blocks all tracking cookies.

When displaying a search result, it provides a direct link to the site and not a crawled redirect. Just as Google and Bing do. In this way, the user’s data remains anonymous.

How to use Metager

Using the Metager private search engine is very simple. The first thing we have to do is to enter the website. Once there, you will see a search bar similar to the other search engines. Just enter your search terms and start processing the search.

The search results are then displayed. You will see differences with respect to other search engines like Google. For example, it does not show images or news. Unless you request it, so the results are simpler and more direct. On the other hand, it is handled as another search engine. Since we will get the information in a fast way. But also, we have options to search for images or create search filters.

A blacklist is available within the settings. That is, we can include web domains that we are not interested in. And in this way, exclude them from the search results. We can also configure image search parameters and language as well. In short, several options to increase user privacy. Anyway, Metager is a great private search engine. Bye!

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