4 ms·
Ask HN: What are the truly independent search engines out there?
As the Tank Man debacle showed, the critical key asset of the web: the search engine, could fail us is subtle or not so subtle way. It also made some of us realize that most of the search engines out there are actually just frontends for bing (Yahoo, Qwantz, Ecosia, ...).
Cliqz seemed promising but went bust a year ago.
What are the truly independent search engines out there?
Additional question: What are the inter dependencies between search engines. Do we have a clear view of where our search results are coming from?
Google -> DDG
Bing -> DDG
Yahoo -> DDG
Wolfram Alpha -> DDG
(source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo#Search_results)
Bing -> Yahoo
(source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search)
Bing -> Qwantz
(source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwant)
Bing -> Ecosia
(source: https://ecosia.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/206153381-Where-do-Ecosia-s-search-results-come-from-)
- jqpabc123 5y agoWhy is "independence" a significant attribute? I don't see it as a guarantee of anything that I really care about. By their very nature, every search engine involves some level of discrimination, discretion and control. There is no alternative. Only one result can be ranked first.
- skywal_l 5y ago> Why is "independence" a significant attribute? Independence here means that the result the search engine gives you is independent of any other search engine result. So that if a original SE results are censored/corrupted/just not good enough, you know that an alternative is available. The more independent SE there are out there, the harder it is to tamper with information. It's pretty much the same reasoning for news sources. > Only one result can be ranked first. For a specific SE yes. But the first result of SE can be different from another SE. Unless you think that for every search queries, there is one and only one possible best result according to some perfectly objective criteria, whatever the SE.
- jqpabc123 5y agoI think it's kinda hard to corrupt just one SE without corrupting them all --- unless the SE vendor itself is corrupt. The existing SEs are typically designed for speed, not sophistication. Their ranking algorithms are pretty dumb and often just statistical and lacking any meaningful insight. If plausible disinformation is placed on a popular web site with lots of views, I doubt that any existing SE is really intelligent enough to filter it out. Expecting anything more is somewhat unrealistic. In other words, "independence" doesn't compensate for the absence of intelligent editorial review and discretion in SE results.
- jdale27 5y agohttps://www.mojeek.com/ https://www.mojeek.com/
- skywal_l 5y agoInteresting, they really do seem independent and been operating for 16 years. Did a couple of dev-related search and the results are relevant. On the other hand, using the "Tank Man" litmus test in the image section does not lead to the expected result.
- ColinHayhurst 5y agoMojeek team member here. For images we presently only index pixabay, so that explains the lack of images that we would otherwise be showing.
- ColinHayhurst 5y agoThis illustrates interdependencies: https://www.searchenginemap.com/ https://www.searchenginemap.com/
- skywal_l 5y agoThis website design is questionable but it's an interesting additional source. On the other hand, I don't see engines like Exalead or Qwant so not complete and must be missing other engines (especially if small and independent). Edit: Qwant is present.