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:

There are still search engines that (claim to) maintain their own index. Most surprisingly, br*ve:

    • Funderpants
      21•5 months ago

      Lol, I know how you feel. Not long ago there was suddenly a bunch of chatter about it on Lemmy and I was thinking the same thing, that it had to be marketing. But I’m a curious sort and I was so sick of bad google results so I tried it.

      Now that I have used Kagi I’m convinced it was organic chatter. I really do like it, I think it’s better, and if they offered money for posts I’d take that money because I’m paying $10 a month for a search engine, lol.

    • mac
      7•5 months ago

      I thought this was a possibility at first, then I used it. The lad time is basically instant, the results are always good and it has a bunch of features with AI etc.

    • M137
      2•5 months ago

      Or people just like it? This isn’t hard to understand and has always been a thing. When people find something they really like they will tell other people about it.