Empowering Choice: Firefox Partners with Qwant for a Better Web
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox-partners-with-qwant/Open linkView original on sh.itjust.works115
Comments59https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox-partners-with-qwant/Open linkView original on sh.itjust.works
I would use SearxNG instead, using a public instance like searx.be. It is really lightweight, gets results from multiple indexes and is very privacy-friendly.
Honestly, I set up SearxNG on my own server, and it's not very nice to use, not very configurable and doesn't return high quality results. It's also kinda slow. Maybe I'm missing something?
It is recommended to use a public instance because it makes it harder to fingerprint you off of your searches. It gets most results from Google and Bing, so you will have similar search results. I haven't experienced any slowness yet, so I can't say anything about that.
@isVeryLoud @hash0772 I had similar experience. I was able to resolve the slowness by enabling swap on the vps. What was worst is that over time Bing and Google API changed and it stopped working, took quite long troubleshooting. Occasionaly I would hit some kind of rate limit and got nothing from Google. It was too much hassle and not worth the vps cost.
Cost is whatever since this VPS is being used for other things.
I'm a bit confused about swap solving things though since it's unlikely to be a memory issue.
@isVeryLoud It was for me, I monitored the server and each query would bump up the memory quite a bit. But that sucker had only 512 MB I think. It could've been some issue that's already fixed with newer Searx versions.
Ah that would definitely be it, my VPS has 4 GB of RAM and runs other services just fine. I set it up about a month ago.
You can try it yourself: https://searx.veryloud.ca/
doesn't duckduckgo do the same thing at this point with tracker links? it also uses bing
last we checked they preserved the tracker links bing themselves would use on results, which you had to opt out of.
I'm sorry but that is not correct. In the link that you shared to their privacy statement it is explicitly stated that they do not collect your identity when using the service. They say that your identity " is the information we use to ensure that you are who you say you are when you make a de-listing request, report or create an account. This includes: first name, last name, email address."
Furthermore, unlike duckduckgo which to my knowledge relies entirely on Bing's search index, Qwant does actually index the web itself and only uses the Bing index when a search returns insufficient hits from their own index. When they query the microsoft index they send the following data along: "Search keywords; Information about the browser you are using (the User Agent); The first three bytes of your IP address; The approximate geographic area at the origin of the search, at the scale of a region or city; The salty hash generated from your IP address, your User Agent and a salt changing no later than every 3 months; A random token generated by Qwant (aiming to limit data cross-checking)."
I do not know much about DuckDuckGo, but from an initial read the privacy policy is much more vague than Qwant's, not mentioning any specific information that is shared. As they are a US company, they are also not covered by the general data protection regulation.
In general, both search engines seem to do a good job at protecting users' privacy, which to me sounds like something that should be encouraged, not polluted with misinformation.
Fair points. Thank you for amending your comment 👍. I wonder in which situations Qwant sends the full IP address specifically. The wording is a bit vague
Any company doing business with EU residents has to comply with GDPR, even if it is not from the EU.
DuckDuckGo claims to also use more than just Bing.
what are you making misleading claims about Qwant for??? if you click your own damn link you’ll see that the only case where they need to collect your name is if you make an account (completely unnecessary), make a de-listing request (to verify that you are who you say you are before removing something, otherwise i could just go and have jeff bezos removed), or if you report something.
also, 80% of your bullet points after “user agent” are redundant because they are literally just what makes up a user agent. newsflash: every single website you ever visit in your life collects your user agent because it needs to know whether to give you the mobile or the desktop version of the site. this has nothing to do with privacy in this case, you’re just slandering to slander
They're getting the location from your IP
Thank you for informing us. This is what I wanted to know.
DuckDuckGo is US-based and founded by the person who previously founded “The Names Database”.
Pass. Qwant has had its share of controversies, regardless their results aren't better than DDG.
If Mozilla was serious about this they would run their own Searx instance and let people choose what engines they wanted to use.
https://searx.space/
Certainly some things are rate limited, Brave and Startpage are particularly bad for this. I omit them from my endjinns in Searx settings.
Yes, except in the case where Google is rate limited. There is/was a Searx instance that regularly got blocked by Google, I do not remember which one though.
After they were purchased by an advertising company? Yes.
Is this instance of searx safe (I cannot self host) Also how is its privacy and performance compared to DDG?
What I linked to is a listing of public Searx instances. You can look at the list and see things like uptime, where they are hosted, etc.
For performance I find it much better than DDG. In the settings page you can choose which search engines you wish to use, for example Brave, Stract, and Qwant. You can also tailor results by adding things like Lemmy, F-Droid, and Anna's Archive.
There's no way Mozilla is replacing Google as the default, so what are they actually announcing here? I didn't read any actual results thats happening. Are they just adding Qwant as an option in the search engine settings?
Too bad about the choice for qwant. I've been using them for many years and they have big flaws: they block visits from unsupported countries, so if you're traveling, you're fucked. They also started blocking ad blocking users and their main webpage is full of crap that you have to disable manually. Their support is non existing. And they use the same censorship as Microsoft. I moved to brave search recently
Searxng and you live happily
Looks interesting but I tried it and like most alternative engines, it's bad and showing regional results for me. It's good for English based searches but not in my lingo
Have you tried Kagi?
No, first time I hear about it
It's a paid search engine, so their only priority is serving you good search results. It feels like using google before the 2012-ish enshittification.
Wtf is Qwant?
Edit: oh, OK, it's a search engine. Next questions, what is the nature of the "partnership" and how is this better or different than DDG?
Sometimes better search results than DDG (but about the same), EU based (France), offers a Openstreetmap based alternative to google maps (opposed to ddg using Apple Maps) and a slightly worse privacy policy are the main differences
Qwant is using its own index
plus Bing. If I remember DDG using only Bing's index and DDG started to censored results in 2022.The partnership is entirely of monetary nature. Like all "partnerships" Mozilla has with 3rd parties that are integrated into Firefox.
That is their business concept. Those companies pay high amounts of money, and Mozilla adds their links into the browser or sends them "anonymized" usage statistics for advertisement purposes.
Right, then the question is, what's Qwant's business model. Where do they get the money from to send to Mozilla? I'm just always so suspicious that the users are the ones getting burned
They sell search queries and meta data (IP address,user agent, etc.) to Microsoft for advertising purposes.
This means Google isn't paying the millions to be the default anymore??
Seems to be an awful news then, that money was useful for development and a default is trivial to change
I didn't see a line that suggests they're putting Qwant as default, only that they're making it available as a search provider, just as DuckDuckGo and others are.
They say:
This part of the post suggests that Qwant will not become the default search engine, but given the millions that Mozilla gets from Google it should not surprise anyone.
Has anyone here used Qwant? I've seen it mentioned a handful of times but I've not tried it myself.
I had used it for a while in the past. The results were surprisingly good. I have moved to other search engines to experiment since then, but I have nothing bad to say about my time with Qwant.
Which search engines do you use now?
Brave Search currently, but I am still in the experimenting and search engine-hopping phase. Henceforth, Brave Search is not my final search engine, either.
Interesting. Which other ones have you tried? I'd be interesting in hearing what you thought of all of them!
@dan @Adda Brave search is getting better and better. I'm personally using combination of DDG, Google. But atm I'm testing kagi.com. I want to write post on it, once I try the 100 free queries.
I was trying Kagi but I'm put off it now that they're partnering with Brendan Eich. I don't think I'd use Brave search, for the same reason.
@dan I see, what's the problam with Brendan Eich, is he the former Firefox CEO?
I would love to but it's still unavailable in my country :/
I've used it a long time now. I find it to have much more relevant results than DDG did last time I tried.
Isn't Qwant glorified Bing?
Isn't Duckduckgo?
this is sick, love qwant and hope this gives them more resources
It started appearing in my search engines list after every update and I remove it from the list every time.
Why?
Because thats imposed and I find myself comfortable with DDG. If I wanted Qwant, I would have added it myself.
Why should they keep adding it every update?
Doesn't Mozilla rely on Google for default search? Does this change that relationship?
and money...mainly the money.
Unknown at this time.
Yeah... Things like this partnership, plus publishing posts against things Google is doing (https://blog.mozilla.org/en/privacy-security/googles-protected-audience-protects-advertisers/), might spook Google a bit. Mozilla rely on receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from Google every year. Don't bite the hand that feeds you.