5 ms·

Kagi is cool and all but... I'm in Europe. I'm busy disengaging from US based services. Any good EU alternatives?

by CodeCompost 2y ago

sanbor 2y ago
https://leta.mullvad.net https://leta.mullvad.net
- lxgr 2y ago
  Seems to be based on Google and Brave, both US companies.
  - areyourllySorry 2y ago
    extra salt in the wound because they pay google for the queries. at least when searching yourself you pay with data, which may or may not be less profitable for them
xandrius 2y ago
https://european-alternatives.eu/category/search-engines https://european-alternatives.eu/category/search-engines
pjerem 2y ago
I’m in the same boat but for Kagi it’s a little different : I don’t pay them because they are privacy friendly (or at least that’s another reason) but because the search quality is better than everything else, including Google. However fwiw, Startpage is nice.
- dustyharddrive 2y ago
  Keep in mind that Startpage is owned by an American advertising company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System1
freehorse 2y ago
There is no good alternative right now. Even eu-based ones use google's or bing's search indexes, essentially being a different frontend for google and bing, so imo it does not make much difference. Kagi sort of does sth similar, but much better imo, which is also why I use them. There is a common initiative by ecosia and qwant to build their own index [0], which is hopeful though, and something to look forward to. [0] https://blog.ecosia.org/eusp/ https://blog.ecosia.org/eusp/
alchemist1e9 2y ago
> I'm busy disengaging from US based services. Can you explain why? From privacy and free speech perspectives aren’t US services now better? Kagi now probably has the best search privacy features in the world after recent upgrades with Privacy Pass and even a ToR endpoint.
- upcoming-sesame 2y ago
  Because the recent trade war has started a trend of "buy European' across the continent buy-european-made.eu
  - alchemist1e9 2y ago
    Before these trade war escalations the US imposed an average tariff rate of about 3.5% on EU goods, notably lower than the EU’s 5.2% on US goods, and lacked the high, sector-specific tariffs seen in the EU. While the US maintained a relatively uniform rate, 2.5% on cars and slightly higher on food and chemicals—the EU targeted certain US sectors with very steep tariffs, like 32.3% on dairy. We should also mention VAT. The EU’s 21% VAT jacks up prices, a €100 item hitting €121 will slash demand. This provided around €1 trillion revenue for EU governments in 2024. While the US’s typical 7% sales tax keeps a $100 item at $107, hurting demand less, total about $457 billion in 2024. This gap makes US goods pricier in the EU (27.7% markup with tariffs) versus EU goods in the US (10.8% markup), acting like an extra trade wall for American exports, while the EU’s VAT refund on exports gives their firms a edge. Notice we haven’t even mentioned defense spending yet …
    - Phelinofist 2y ago
      Do you understand that stuff made in Europe and sold in Europe is also subject to the VAT?
      - berdario 2y ago
        it seems he also overlooked, in his tirade against EU VAT, that almost the whole world has VAT. It's just an handful of countries like USA and Malaysia that are the weird ones, and don't implement a VAT tax
quinncom 2y ago
Two ongoing projects to solve this: Qwant and Ecosia, two European search engines, announced on October 24, 2023, a partnership to develop a European search index to lessen their dependence on US tech giants Google and Microsoft. https://insidetelecom.com/qwant-and-ecosia-are-building-an-independent-european-search-engine/ https://insidetelecom.com/qwant-and-ecosia-are-building-an-i... For the OpenWebSearch.eu initiative, 14 renowned European research and computer centers from 7 countries have joined forces to develop an open European infrastructure for web search https://openwebsearch.eu/ https://openwebsearch.eu/
crystal_revenge 2y ago
> I'm in Europe. I'm busy disengaging from US based services. It's worth pointing out that you're going to struggle with this, and it's because (as all software engineers know) Europe has never supported a strong tech/software developer friendly culture. To be clear: I am not saying there are not fantastic devs in Europe (in fact, most of the devs I respect the most are European), but the EU has always struggled to pay competitively and grow its local software community. In fact, all the amazing software engineers I know in Europe.. work for US companies, making US software products (and making US total comp). Here's a quote of Alan Kay talking about this is in 1997 > [Dijkstra] once wrote a paper—of the kind that he liked to write a lot of—which had the title On the fact that the Atlantic has two sides. It was basically all about how different the approaches to computing science were in Europe, especially in Holland and in the United States. In the US, here, we were not mathematical enough, and gee, in Holland, if you're a full professor, you're actually appointed by the Queen, and there are many other uh important distinctions made between the two cultures. So, uhm, I wrote a rebuttal paper, just called On the fact that most of the software in the world is written on one side of the Atlantic. The time to address this, unfortunately for Europe, is not today, but 30-40 years ago.
- sebazzz 2y ago
  You can't generalize the EU. It are dozens of completely different countries. > In fact, all the amazing software engineers I know in Europe.. work for US companies, making US software products (and making US total comp). What is an amazing software developer if it is not someone who delivers business value? Because there are a lot of software development companies in the Netherlands for instance, or teams part of companies, and they surely deliver business value or they wouldn't exist. By now I would also bet that of the small subset of developers considering emigrating to the States, sure think they've now dodged a bullet.
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    They deliver a lot of value, and they’re even so good at it that they’re often consulting for large overseas companies. But it’s like ASML, do you see anyone making chips using their stuff in the Netherlands?
init2null 2y ago
Fair enough, but I want the best possible searches. So that means Kagi, which includes Google, Bing, Brave, Yandex, and its own small web indexer. Pure European search is just unrealistic right now. Not unless you prefer the Eastern European flavor of Yandex alone.
sunshine-o 2y ago
I am seeing this a lot recently, people trying to switch to EU based alternatives. I am not sure exactly what are your motivations but if it is privacy and trying to fight some sort of tyranny, I am afraid this might be a bit naive and maybe counterproductive. The EU is as much influenced by the interests of Big tech than the US. Maybe even more in a way. The regulations and fines you hear about are kayfabe. It is looking more and more like the net of regulations the EU is rolling out is turning Europe into a digital Gulag. Right now they only really met a resistance for that ChatControl one [0] but they have been trying for years over and over again, and will probably win at the end. The irony is if you want and EU alternative you might need to defeat the EU first, who has been preventing the emergence of alternatives for decades now. Or just selfhost as much as possible at home for now. - [0] https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/
- palata 2y ago
  Haha sure, nice try.
layer8 2y ago
GOOD search might be worth a try: https://european-alternatives.eu/product/good-search https://european-alternatives.eu/product/good-search It’s hosted in Germany and uses the independent Brave search index.
esafak 2y ago
Its founder is from Yugoslavia, so it is European in a sense. https://vladimir.prelovac.com/ https://vladimir.prelovac.com/
- CodeCompost 2y ago
  It's about jurisdiction. You can claim to be privacy friendly but if the laws in the country your services are being offered from can legally demand you break it...
II2II 2y ago
I'm seeing similar attitudes in my country and am disgusted by it. It mirrors and reinforces the isolationist attitudes that we are seeing in the US. We should be looking outwards in an effort to diversify our options and strengthen our ties to other countries, rather than looking inwards. (Yes, I realize the EU is a collection of countries. Yet there is more to the world than the EU.) If Kagi is truly cool, by cool I am including opposition to current American policies, and you think they offer a good product, then you shouldn't fret about supporting them. If they aren't cool, then by all means look for alternatives.
niutech 2y ago
As we're talking about Orion browser, there is Servo web engine and Servoshell backed by Linux Foundation Europe.
mbarria 2y ago
If what you worry is about privacy, Kagi has very strong privacy features that shouldn't be vulnerable to gov interference. https://help.kagi.com/kagi/privacy/privacy-pass.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/privacy/privacy-pass.html

Kagi is cool and all but... I'm in Europe. I'm busy disengaging from US based services. Any good EU alternatives?

sanbor 2y ago

https://leta.mullvad.net https://leta.mullvad.net

lxgr 2y ago
Seems to be based on Google and Brave, both US companies.
- areyourllySorry 2y ago
  extra salt in the wound because they pay google for the queries. at least when searching yourself you pay with data, which may or may not be less profitable for them

xandrius 2y ago

https://european-alternatives.eu/category/search-engines https://european-alternatives.eu/category/search-engines

pjerem 2y ago

I’m in the same boat but for Kagi it’s a little different : I don’t pay them because they are privacy friendly (or at least that’s another reason) but because the search quality is better than everything else, including Google. However fwiw, Startpage is nice.

dustyharddrive 2y ago
Keep in mind that Startpage is owned by an American advertising company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System1

freehorse 2y ago

There is no good alternative right now. Even eu-based ones use google's or bing's search indexes, essentially being a different frontend for google and bing, so imo it does not make much difference. Kagi sort of does sth similar, but much better imo, which is also why I use them. There is a common initiative by ecosia and qwant to build their own index [0], which is hopeful though, and something to look forward to. [0] https://blog.ecosia.org/eusp/ https://blog.ecosia.org/eusp/

alchemist1e9 2y ago

> I'm busy disengaging from US based services. Can you explain why? From privacy and free speech perspectives aren’t US services now better? Kagi now probably has the best search privacy features in the world after recent upgrades with Privacy Pass and even a ToR endpoint.

upcoming-sesame 2y ago
Because the recent trade war has started a trend of "buy European' across the continent buy-european-made.eu
- alchemist1e9 2y ago
  Before these trade war escalations the US imposed an average tariff rate of about 3.5% on EU goods, notably lower than the EU’s 5.2% on US goods, and lacked the high, sector-specific tariffs seen in the EU. While the US maintained a relatively uniform rate, 2.5% on cars and slightly higher on food and chemicals—the EU targeted certain US sectors with very steep tariffs, like 32.3% on dairy. We should also mention VAT. The EU’s 21% VAT jacks up prices, a €100 item hitting €121 will slash demand. This provided around €1 trillion revenue for EU governments in 2024. While the US’s typical 7% sales tax keeps a $100 item at $107, hurting demand less, total about $457 billion in 2024. This gap makes US goods pricier in the EU (27.7% markup with tariffs) versus EU goods in the US (10.8% markup), acting like an extra trade wall for American exports, while the EU’s VAT refund on exports gives their firms a edge. Notice we haven’t even mentioned defense spending yet …
  - Phelinofist 2y ago
    Do you understand that stuff made in Europe and sold in Europe is also subject to the VAT?
    - berdario 2y ago
      it seems he also overlooked, in his tirade against EU VAT, that almost the whole world has VAT. It's just an handful of countries like USA and Malaysia that are the weird ones, and don't implement a VAT tax

quinncom 2y ago

Two ongoing projects to solve this: Qwant and Ecosia, two European search engines, announced on October 24, 2023, a partnership to develop a European search index to lessen their dependence on US tech giants Google and Microsoft. https://insidetelecom.com/qwant-and-ecosia-are-building-an-independent-european-search-engine/ https://insidetelecom.com/qwant-and-ecosia-are-building-an-i... For the OpenWebSearch.eu initiative, 14 renowned European research and computer centers from 7 countries have joined forces to develop an open European infrastructure for web search https://openwebsearch.eu/ https://openwebsearch.eu/

crystal_revenge 2y ago

> I'm in Europe. I'm busy disengaging from US based services. It's worth pointing out that you're going to struggle with this, and it's because (as all software engineers know) Europe has never supported a strong tech/software developer friendly culture. To be clear: I am not saying there are not fantastic devs in Europe (in fact, most of the devs I respect the most are European), but the EU has always struggled to pay competitively and grow its local software community. In fact, all the amazing software engineers I know in Europe.. work for US companies, making US software products (and making US total comp). Here's a quote of Alan Kay talking about this is in 1997 > [Dijkstra] once wrote a paper—of the kind that he liked to write a lot of—which had the title On the fact that the Atlantic has two sides. It was basically all about how different the approaches to computing science were in Europe, especially in Holland and in the United States. In the US, here, we were not mathematical enough, and gee, in Holland, if you're a full professor, you're actually appointed by the Queen, and there are many other uh important distinctions made between the two cultures. So, uhm, I wrote a rebuttal paper, just called On the fact that most of the software in the world is written on one side of the Atlantic. The time to address this, unfortunately for Europe, is not today, but 30-40 years ago.

sebazzz 2y ago
You can't generalize the EU. It are dozens of completely different countries. > In fact, all the amazing software engineers I know in Europe.. work for US companies, making US software products (and making US total comp). What is an amazing software developer if it is not someone who delivers business value? Because there are a lot of software development companies in the Netherlands for instance, or teams part of companies, and they surely deliver business value or they wouldn't exist. By now I would also bet that of the small subset of developers considering emigrating to the States, sure think they've now dodged a bullet.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  They deliver a lot of value, and they’re even so good at it that they’re often consulting for large overseas companies. But it’s like ASML, do you see anyone making chips using their stuff in the Netherlands?

init2null 2y ago

Fair enough, but I want the best possible searches. So that means Kagi, which includes Google, Bing, Brave, Yandex, and its own small web indexer. Pure European search is just unrealistic right now. Not unless you prefer the Eastern European flavor of Yandex alone.

sunshine-o 2y ago

I am seeing this a lot recently, people trying to switch to EU based alternatives. I am not sure exactly what are your motivations but if it is privacy and trying to fight some sort of tyranny, I am afraid this might be a bit naive and maybe counterproductive. The EU is as much influenced by the interests of Big tech than the US. Maybe even more in a way. The regulations and fines you hear about are kayfabe. It is looking more and more like the net of regulations the EU is rolling out is turning Europe into a digital Gulag. Right now they only really met a resistance for that ChatControl one [0] but they have been trying for years over and over again, and will probably win at the end. The irony is if you want and EU alternative you might need to defeat the EU first, who has been preventing the emergence of alternatives for decades now. Or just selfhost as much as possible at home for now. - [0] https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/

palata 2y ago
Haha sure, nice try.

layer8 2y ago

GOOD search might be worth a try: https://european-alternatives.eu/product/good-search https://european-alternatives.eu/product/good-search It’s hosted in Germany and uses the independent Brave search index.

esafak 2y ago

Its founder is from Yugoslavia, so it is European in a sense. https://vladimir.prelovac.com/ https://vladimir.prelovac.com/

CodeCompost 2y ago
It's about jurisdiction. You can claim to be privacy friendly but if the laws in the country your services are being offered from can legally demand you break it...

II2II 2y ago

I'm seeing similar attitudes in my country and am disgusted by it. It mirrors and reinforces the isolationist attitudes that we are seeing in the US. We should be looking outwards in an effort to diversify our options and strengthen our ties to other countries, rather than looking inwards. (Yes, I realize the EU is a collection of countries. Yet there is more to the world than the EU.) If Kagi is truly cool, by cool I am including opposition to current American policies, and you think they offer a good product, then you shouldn't fret about supporting them. If they aren't cool, then by all means look for alternatives.

niutech 2y ago

As we're talking about Orion browser, there is Servo web engine and Servoshell backed by Linux Foundation Europe.

mbarria 2y ago

If what you worry is about privacy, Kagi has very strong privacy features that shouldn't be vulnerable to gov interference. https://help.kagi.com/kagi/privacy/privacy-pass.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/privacy/privacy-pass.html