12 ms·

Mullvad Leta

379 points by microflash 1y ago

dangoodmanUT 1y ago
Aren't these APIs absurdly expensive? How are they justifying these costs, or are they using "unofficial" APIs?
- jdpedrie 1y ago
  Brave has a subscription tier that offers storage rights. But it's ~9x the cost of their normal Pro subscription. I have a hard time imagining that the cost works out in their favor (discounting the possibility of a special arrangement) with how long the query stream tail is in web search.
icar 1y ago
I'm surprised this is created using NodeJS. Given how critical performance is in a proxy, and that RAM is precious running Redis.
VonGuard 1y ago
Mullvad swinging for the fences suddenly. They have a billboard in South San Francisco, too. Did they get a cash infusion? Why all of the sudden are they expanding? Honestly, I'd have changed the name by now...
- oscarmoxon 1y ago
  They're also littering the London tube system with ads - there's definitely been a lottery win or a series A.
  - parkaboy 1y ago
    They were one of the earliest to adopt bitcoin and monero payments--if they didn't convert all those payments immediately to cash, they're probably sitting pretty right now.
    - dijit 1y ago
      They also have a partnership with Tailscale that can't be undersold. I'm not sure how much it adds to their bottom line for each sale, but my corp was using the Mullvad VPN addition to tailscale to do global testing by our developers. IE; "is something blocked, do we detect GEOIP properly" etc;
      - george_perez 1y ago
        And Mozilla VPN as well.
      - haiku2077 1y ago
        The Tailscale integration is super handy while traveling. One app to access my home server and my home region.
  - unfitted2545 1y ago
    And whole buses!
  - noir_lord 1y ago
    Now’s a good time since the online safety bill kicks in towards end of July. UK use of VPN’a outside the office/work environment is gonna skyrocket.
  - kfreds 1y ago
    > there's definitely been a lottery win or a series A We have neither won the lottery nor taken on outside investment. We've been growing for years, and we've reached a point where we can afford campaigns like this. It is an interesting experiment by our marketing team. Still, I think people on HN overestimate the cost of campaigns like this.
- jjice 1y ago
  Curious why the name change suggestion. Honestly, I immediately thought of the Seinfeld episode where Jerry forgets the woman’s name. > Mullva?
  - fernandotakai 1y ago
    kind of of topic, but i had to google to find out which female part rhymed with dolores, because it made no sense to me (as an ESL). (for people wondering, it's clitoris). https://seinfeld.fandom.com/wiki/The_Junior_Mint https://seinfeld.fandom.com/wiki/The_Junior_Mint https://seinfeld.fandom.com/wiki/Dolores https://seinfeld.fandom.com/wiki/Dolores
    - philsnow 1y ago
      In (American, at least) English, there's a very common pattern of vowel reduction on unstressed syllables, resulting in "schwa-ification" [0][1] where all such vowels become indistinguishable from each other. In this case, we say "duh lorr uhss" instead of "do lor ez". The second one doesn't sound like clitoris at all, but the first one.. okay it doesn't sound similar to me either, but it's closer at least. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_phonology#Unstressed_syllables https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_phonology#Unstressed_s... [1] "schwa" is the name of the mid, central, unrounded vowel, IPA [ə]
    - trealira 1y ago
      I have to say that, the vast majority of the time, the way I've heard and said the word "clitoris" doesn't rhyme at all with "Dolores," so I wouldn't have been able to guess it either.
- holysoles 1y ago
  based on their company about page, looks like Leta has existed since 2023 https://mullvad.net/en/about https://mullvad.net/en/about
- Barbing 1y ago
  Yes, it’s gotta be something catchy. Like “Rakuten”!
- bosse 1y ago
  I noticed their billboards and bus ads in New York City a year ago, so it’s not entirely new that they are marketing like this.
  - al_borland 1y ago
    Same, but on the train at the DC airport. I liked that they align their actions with their mission. Physical ads like this are perfect way to advertise a privacy tool, as their ads respect user privacy.
- prophesi 1y ago
  They prefer outdoor ads over targeted online advertising https://mullvad.net/en/blog/advertising-that-targets-everyone https://mullvad.net/en/blog/advertising-that-targets-everyon...
- tomxor 1y ago
  I had to switch to iVPN last year (similar ethos), because Mullvad became pretty much unusable due to blacklisting and laggy DNS servers. I'm assuming it has something to do with the push in recent years to expand their userbase, but they don't seem to be able to keep a clean enough pool of IPs like the big popular ones to cope. I know all VPNs struggle with this but it was getting ridiculous, where every single server in a country would receive infinite re-captcha.
  - lysace 1y ago
    Not quite my experience. > where every single server in a country would receive infinite re-captcha. What does that even mean? Have you also disabled cookies? Typically it's a Cloudflare captcha if you're doing that, not a re-captcha. And afaik pretty much everyone gets this treatment with zero history. Welcome to the modern web.
    - zargon 1y ago
      They’re referring to the situation when a service has blacklisted you, but will pretend they haven’t and give you captcha after captcha to keep you busy.
      - tomxor 1y ago
        Yup, I found a shortcut to determining this is to use the audio option, which will instantly admit you are blocked due to "suspicious network activity" rather than make you solve stuff - i guess because of accessibility?
    - encom 1y ago
      >Welcome to the modern web. Cloudflare recently started holding stackoverflow hostage as well. "Weird" OS + "weird" browser + cookie autodelete = www is hell, even on clearnet. I hate cloudflare so much it's unreal, including everyone who works for them, for enabling this nonsense.
  - INTPenis 1y ago
    iVPN is a great choice in terms of security, they also use STboot, but I think you're just flying under the radar with their IPs because they struggle with the same problems as Mullvad.
- RemainsOfTheDay 1y ago
  I've been seeing Mullvad billboards for years, including in Paris.
- JCattheATM 1y ago
  My concern is that when they can advertise to the extent they do, to what extent can they really be trusted? Anything that popular is going to be a target by law enforcement, and we really have no way of verifying any of their claims.
  - sillyfluke 1y ago
    Yeah, this advertising to the masses push makes me queasy. It has the reverse effect on me than was intended. Weird brand self-harm for a privacy/data hygiene oriented company.
- kfreds 1y ago
  > Did they get a cash infusion? Why all of the sudden are they expanding? No cash infusion. We've been growing for years, just like many other VPN services. We're still quite a bit smaller than e.g. Nord and Express though. As for our choice of advertising, we don't run an affiliate program, nor do we want to track our customers through online ads, so we're trying this instead. It's cheaper than you might think. // Fredrik (cofounder of Mullvad)
  - reisse 1y ago
    Sorry for hijacking the thread, but I'm too curious not to ask: is having censorship circumvention out of the box a non-goal for Mullvad? Because there are VPNs with good censorship circumvention tech, and there are VPNs with good privacy guarantees, but I know none which can provide both. What Mullvad offers now is either a decade old stuff which is blocked even by subpar DPI solutions, or a set of (more modern) protocol bridges which are painful to setup and sometimes IP-banned.
    - kfreds 1y ago
      Mullvad's mission is to make mass surveillance AND online censorship ineffective. So yes, we do intend to offer excellent censorship circumvention out of the box. Having said that we have clearly prioritized privacy for a long time. For what it's worth we have several censorship improvements on the roadmap. Stay tuned.
      - _lvbh 1y ago
        I already see shadowsocks which is nice. I'm still forced to use V2ray and xray-core in some rejoins though so I route traffic from my device -> xray -> my server -> wireguard mullvad. Works for now I suppose. Also been experimenting with routing small amounts of traffic through the syncthing relay network since they have relays running locally which may be in less restrictive provinces
        kfreds 1y ago
        Interesting. Try reaching out to Mullvad's support as well if you haven't done so already. If I'm not mistaken they conduct censorship circumvention experiments from time to time together with customers. I'm sure they'd also be interested to hear about any long-term resilient low-bandwidth channels you've found, such as the syncthing relay network. Those are very useful for bootstrapping and configuration updates.
- NalNezumi 1y ago
  I really hope they don't change the name, I like the name "Mullvad" (Mole in Swedish) and "Leta" (Search in Swedish) and everything doesn't need to be Anglo centric in the appeal :) Although the society is almost zero privacy, it have historically had some funny IT figures for privacy and digital issues so people searching up for the background of the name might stumble upon it. [1] https://youtu.be/rHVVpNRwLk0?feature=shared https://youtu.be/rHVVpNRwLk0?feature=shared [2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnhof https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnhof [3] Peter Löthberg https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1d8056g/comment/l73thz7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1d8056g/comm... [4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay
  - SahAssar 1y ago
    I'm guessing they won't change the name. It's a similar branding strategy as ikea, with "funny" nordic (specifically swedish, but other brands have done it with norweigan and danish too) names that for some people makes it sound quaint and quality.
esafak 1y ago
Mods: Consider adding to the title: A privacy focused search engine I quoted their FAQ; it's not editorializing: https://leta.mullvad.net/faq https://leta.mullvad.net/faq
- microflash 1y ago
  I did add that description but seems like it was edited by mods.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
    I presume that's because calling it privacy-focused is considered editorializing. I'd at least hope it can have "(search engine)" or similar because I had no idea what it was before clicking.
    - microflash 1y ago
      Yeah. I usually stick to original titles and don't editorialize them, except when the title itself does not make it obvious what it is about.
    - glenstein 1y ago
      I had assumed it was Mullvad announcing their own LLM.
- Barbing 1y ago
  Right, one that by my understanding “pools” searches, in a way. As their blog put it in 2023: “Mullvad Leta uses the Google Search API as a proxy, caching each search. These cached results are shared amongst all users, reducing costs and improving privacy. This service is user-supported and doesn't rely on ads or data selling.”
  - blibble 1y ago
    I thought the google search and bing API terms explicitly forbade you from caching the results for more than a short period of time exactly to stop people doing this
DrZeina 1y ago
I am extremely excited about this and thus far it seems to work well.
taco_emoji 1y ago
Unfortunately, this is blocked at many places of work because of the domain, unlike DDG
- freehorse 1y ago
  I am curious, why would a workplace block the mullvad.net domain? Or is it rather a whitelist thing?
  - skyyler 1y ago
    People use VPN services at workplaces to circumvent web filters.
  - hypeatei 1y ago
    "proxy avoidance" is the listed reason on my corporate network.
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    IDK, why do some workplaces ban Steam domain? Or block Mozilla but not Chrome? IT people are weird.
  - npteljes 1y ago
    Many workplaces use a corporate firewall, and on the admin panel, they can enable-disable categories of websites, like "Porn", "Adult themes", "Gambling", "Social", "Video streaming", "AI", etc. One of the categories could be "VPN", *.mullvad.net can fall into it, and it could be that they disabled that category. At many workplaces, it's against the rules to circumvent the company's monitoring, and so, many of such technologies are banned.
    - 0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago
      Which is a killer because so many developer tools are on “naughty” domains (eg .dev and .ai) which are automatically blocklisted
rasengan 1y ago
This isn't really privacy or security focused unless 'trust' is a component of security architecture. Make no mistake, Mullvad Leta knows what you searched for and who you are. /Theater/ has no place in privacy. The right way to do it, short of FHE, is to encrypt the query client side, pass this to the proxy which does not pass the source IP, which passes this to the search engine for decryption. Search results are encrypted and pass thru in the reverse: Client (encrypts) -> Proxy (passes thru no IP) -> Search engine (receives, decrypts, performs, and encrypts results) -> Proxy passes encrypted blob of results back to user -> Client privately reviews private search results. Edit: private.sh tried this in the past but unfortunately was shuttered with the end of gigablast.
- huslage 1y ago
  Mullvad has built trust over many years. There is always someone who knows what you are searching for. The search engine will not accept an opaque blob of encrypted data as a search term, after all.
  - rasengan 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - freehorse 1y ago
      > if all parties wish to increase the privacy Agreed that the conclusion is that not all parties want to increase privacy. Thus there is at least one party that does not want to increase privacy. But we already know that google does not want to increase privacy. Thus this does not show that mullvad does not want to increase privacy.
    - conorjh 1y ago
      [dead]
  - bitpush 1y ago
    The trust comes from them being a small player. The moment they get big, govt will come knocking, and they'll be just like anyone else.
mtlynch 1y ago
They run Leta on diskless servers, just like the VPN: >We run the Leta servers on STBooted RAM only servers, the same as our VPN servers. These servers run the latest Ubuntu LTS, with our own stripped down custom Mullvad VPN kernel which we tune in-house to remove anything unnecessary for the running system. > >The cached search results are stored in an in-memory Redis key / value store. This is surprising given that they try to cache results for 30 days: >Each search that has not already been cached is saved in RAM for 30 days. The idea is that the more searches performed, the larger and more substantial the cached results become, therefore aiding with privacy. That's surprising because presumably they lose all results if they have to reboot the server. With a VPN service, there's not much they have to store past the lifetime of the VPN session, but if they're storing search results for 30 days, I wonder how they deal with this? Maybe best effort is fine because they don't strictly need to cache the results, as it just provides marginal privacy improvements.
- KoolKat23 1y ago
  yes, they state in the FAQ, any updates to the system clear the cache. Caching is due to query cost.
  - bravetraveler 1y ago
    Cost that's external, too: Brave or Google are behind the results. Things would be terrible without the cache... but that doesn't mean every request needs to be cached. Can't - gotta source it. Wouldn't want to hang onto things too long, current events run out of currency :)
- ignoramous 1y ago
  > This is surprising ... as it just provides marginal privacy improvements. Diskless does not mean SSH-less or network-less. The "data" can be pulled / pushed just the same, which is to say, Diskless, in this case, is no better than verifiably read-only partitions (like on ChromeOS & Android, for example).
  - mtlynch 1y ago
mrweasel 1y ago
Interesting solution to let the user pick which search engine to use. Sadly Bing is shutting down their API, it would have been great to be able to use that as well.
- DaSHacka 1y ago
  > Sadly Bing is shutting down their API Interesting, does DDG have plans to switch or start their own index?
  - mrweasel 1y ago
    There are some provisions for their larger customers, see https://www.wired.com/story/bing-microsoft-api-support-ending/ https://www.wired.com/story/bing-microsoft-api-support-endin... (https://archive.ph/IVKGT https://archive.ph/IVKGT). So no DuckDuckGo and Ecosia won't lose their Bing backends.
chvid 1y ago
Fast, no ads, reasonable results. Well done!
- bitpush 1y ago
  and stale.
DbigCOX 1y ago
This is incredible actually.
meta_ai_x 1y ago
[flagged]
- Ylpertnodi 1y ago
  >Browsers, OSes and Knowledge Engines (search, llms) should 100% know about my tastes, my intelligence level, my interest level and absolutely render output based on my needs and input/output preference. What about the people that own the "[b]rowsers, OSes and....." etc, etc.
  - DaSHacka 1y ago
    hijacking this reply to say I think that was the most HN-comment to ever grace this website, bravo.
superkuh 1y ago
Pretty much the only way to use google search as an HTML webpage instead of a JS web application these days. It's great. It reminds me of the scroogle.com proxy days. I use it for all but my retro machines, which is a shame. I know Mullvad is a 'privacy' company but I really wish they'd acknowledge that HTTP+HTTPS is more robust to governments' censorship than centralized CA TLS only. HTTP+HTTPS would allow my non-bleeding edge TLS retro machines to search again.
jsnell 1y ago
Previous discussions from the initial launch, 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36402162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36402162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35964397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35964397
- PrivacyDingus 1y ago
  2023, hug of death coming in 2025
- dang 1y ago
  Thanks! Macroexpanded: Mullvad Leta: A search engine used in the Mullvad Browser - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36402162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36402162 - June 2023 (142 comments) Mullvad Leta (Search Engine) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35964397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35964397 - May 2023 (32 comments)
nosioptar 1y ago
I was dumb enough to buy more than 30 days worth of mullvad once. They changed their terms of service to remove port forwarding. Because I'd paid more than 30 days ago, they wouldn't refund me anything. Screw mullvad. I'd have to be a damned fool to to ever trust them again.
- DaSHacka 1y ago
  Really? That's unfortunate, I heard of many people getting refunds back when they removed port forwarding.
  - nosioptar 1y ago
    I didn't because I'd paid more than 30 days prior to the change.
- Cerium 1y ago
  I don't hold it against them, but I got burned by that change too; but it was entirely reasonable, allowing inbound provides abuse opportunities which degrade their primary service reputation.
  - nosioptar 1y ago
    I wouldn't be mad, had they have been willing to refund since they changed the functionality.
napolux 1y ago
I'm using startpage.com, guess this is gonna replace it as soon as it matures a bit
dangus 1y ago
> Did you make your own search engine from scratch? > We did not, we made a front end to the Google and Brave Search APIs. So this is pointless, and honestly kind of lazy?
- JanNash 1y ago
  Is it pointless though if e.g. there are no ads?
  - dangus 1y ago
    In a way, yes, because without ads or any kind of revenue source it's bound to be shut down.
    - areyourllySorry 1y ago
      enjoy it while it still works, then.
      - dangus 1y ago
        Why would I switch to a product that I know will fail and go away?
        areyourllySorry 1y ago
        why should we enjoy life if we're going to die anyway?
Zefiroj 1y ago
I wonder how well the caching works. The FAQ says 30 days, so you might be getting a pretty stale result. That combined with Google's "fun fact: 15% of all Google searches have never been searched before", makes me wonder how identifying these queries can be.
deelowe 1y ago
I feel like the name "mullivad" might present challenges for user adoption.
- PrivacyDingus 1y ago
  current options are google, duckduckgo, bing, I think they'll be fine; what's in a name? and all that
- DarkCrusader2 1y ago
  Totally agree. Everything should be Americanized as much as possible so that it conforms to American sensibilities and is easier to use and understand for Americans. Who cares about languages and culture of few dozen people who does not live in AMERICA.
- sakjur 1y ago
  Am I (native Swedish speaker, so perhaps ignorant of secondary connotations here) missing something that should be obvious? Is mullvad inappropriate to some readers or is it just an odd name?
  - nkurz 1y ago
    No, I don't think you are missing anything. As an English speaking American, it just strikes me as a strange name that I wouldn't immediately associate with a search engine. Note for example that the parent spelled it wrong despite that being the focus of his question. But there is no second level of meaning or innuendo that I'm seeing.
tiffanyh 1y ago
How is this different than using DDG with the “!g” ?
- toast0 1y ago
  Doesn't !g just redirect you to Google? From comments, this is proxying and potentially caching from Google. Having an intermediary is potentially of value.
xnx 1y ago
These alternative search engines really feel like they're fighting the last war. Web content is so reader-hostile that you need a tool to extract the answer/information you're looking for and not just give you a link to the page.
- wetpaws 1y ago
  [dead]
- SirHumphrey 1y ago
  I don’t actually. I have read far too many AI summaries where the llm combines data about two different people with the same name creating a biography of someone that doesn’t exist. And once the use of chatbots in this role becomes widespread- don’t think for a second that companies won’t sso the thing until it’s about as useful as current search.
  - haiku2077 1y ago
    I had an issue where Slack AI combined multiple people I work with into a summary that was negative in tone. And of course there was no way to provide feedback on this harmful behavior.
- hart_russell 1y ago
  If the dead internet theory comes to fruition, I wonder if there will be "curated internets" where only good actors will be allowed to participate.
xyst 1y ago
Search engines are so hot rn. Reminds me of 1990s, 2000s. AskJeeves, anyone? \s I jest, but the focus on privacy is important. I used to use DDG but ended up using (and paying for) Kagi.
jonplackett 1y ago
This thing has been advertised EVERYWHERE in London the last few weeks. But the adverts didn’t make a lot of sense and I had no idea what the product actually did.
- diggan 1y ago
  I think it's a new/old marketing strategy. Make it interesting enough that people see and notice it but don't understand what it is, with the hopes that you go out to figure out what it is. A brave strategy, but since it's still around, I guess it works sometimes.
  - Sammi 1y ago
    It incentivises people to ask each other about it. But you need high pervasiveness of the ad for two people to both have seen it and ask each other about it.
- throw432196 1y ago
  I still didn’t know what it was. Went to the headline link and had no idea, typed in “what is this”. Still no idea. I had to read the hn comments to discover it is a search proxy..
jeanlucas 1y ago
I'm sorry for being negative, but it feels to me just as a publicity stunt. No serious product, just a proxy for Google, while it is interesting not a real solution. But as a marketing tactic to promote your VPN it is an interesting move.
- xlt 1y ago
  A proxy for Google is a product if it provides additional features Google alone does not provide... in this case: Privacy
- lolinder 1y ago
  A caching proxy for Google is a real solution for a real problem. It might not be a solution to a problem you have.
  - jeanlucas 1y ago
    It solves a problem for a niche that you assume I don't have. But it has no real way to monetize and is likely to be shut down as soon as the marketing/publicity objectives are not aligned anymore. That's what I was trying to point out.
    - mmooss 1y ago
      Maybe Mullvad has other interests too?
    - mystified5016 1y ago
      > No serious product, just a proxy for Google, while it is interesting not a real solution. Sure
- skeaker 1y ago
  Not sure what you mean by this, it is a real thing you can actually use so obviously it's not "just a publicity stunt."
  - 1y ago
nalekberov 1y ago
From the FAQ page (https://leta.mullvad.net/faq https://leta.mullvad.net/faq) : > However, Leta is useless as a service if you use the perfect non-logging VPN, a privacy focussed DNS service, a web browser that resists fingerprinting, and correlation attacks from global actors. Leta is also useless if your browser blocks all cookies, tracking pixels and other tracking technologies. In other words everyone can benefit from it. I don't know any browser (not talking about obscure browsers like lynx) who can completely resist fingerprinting.
- VTimofeenko 1y ago
  Using an obscure browser that is not hiding its user agent is arguably worse for fingerprinting.
  - nalekberov 1y ago
    Ironically yes.
- haiku2077 1y ago
  Mullvad makes a fingerprinting resistant browser. It uses tricks like displaying the content inside a smaller window to mimic popular laptops and phones. https://mullvad.net/en/browser https://mullvad.net/en/browser It's not perfect (it's firefox based so that already sticks out) but better than could be done otherwise.
smallerfish 1y ago
So how do they make money? Are they hoping to convert users to their VPN service? Or are they just trying to stay under the free tier Google API limits?
- haiku2077 1y ago
  Leta is the supported search engine of Mullvad Browser which is a privacy-centric version of Firefox that integrates with Mullvad VPN. Think Mullvad Browser:Regular Internet as Tor Browser:Onion websites. So this is part of an ecosystem for their VPN subscribers. (I'm a Mullvad customer, not Mullvad directly, but that's how I use their browser and Leta.)
- prophesi 1y ago
  In the past, Leta was a service that was only accessible to paid Mullvad users. I'm unsure when they started allowing general access, but that's initially how it made commercial sense.
idlip 1y ago
Why not embrace searxng^1. But sure I know brave and other would rate limit for it. What would be the difference from duckduckgo lite? https://docs.searxng.org/ https://docs.searxng.org/
jug 1y ago
> Leta aims to present a reliable and trustworthy way of searching privately on the internet. > Leta is also useless if your browser blocks all cookies, tracking pixels and other tracking technologies. Huh? This needed better clarification because the two points seem to be at odds with each other.
- freehorse 1y ago
  I assume if you block all tracking technologies it does not offer anything more than what you already have? Because then your queries cannot be tracked?
- jsnell 1y ago
  What they're saying is that if you had already closed off all possible methods of being tracked, you'd gain nothing from this service, since whatever other search engine you choose to use instead would by definition not be able to track you.
worldsavior 1y ago
I don't understand why Google or Brave are cooperating with this, they don't earn anything. And if they're not, what prevents Google blocking Mullvad IPs?
- o_m 1y ago
  Mullvad is paying to use their API's, like Kagi does. Google is making money on this https://leta.mullvad.net/faq#made-from-scratch https://leta.mullvad.net/faq#made-from-scratch
  - worldsavior 1y ago
    Then how does Mullvad earns? This surely costs a lot of money to pay for Google search results.
    - akimbostrawman 1y ago
      Leta used to require a VPN subscription. They probably figured the cost weren't that high and the possible increase in future customer by offering it for free would at least cover or even outweight that cost.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- fr4nkr 1y ago
  Google likely just doesn't care. They know most people won't bother using privacy-oriented services out of inconvenience or apathy.
thunder-blue-3 1y ago
This would've been a great product 10 years ago. I've unapologetically not had to use a search engine in almost a year (or at least can count on 1 hand having to use it) since GPT models have come out.
- whizzter 1y ago
  More than once people at work have asked me for help after not solving their problems with ChatGPT, and the solution was to google and hit some stackoverflow answer.
- homebrewer 1y ago
  The situation hasn't changed for most of us. None of the people I've talked to over the past couple of years have stopped using Google, none are using LLMs for anything other than translation (or helping proofread their English) or simply for wasting time. FWIW, since we're exchanging anecdotes, LLMs have been completely useless for me. I try them every 3-6 months and always return to Google disappointed.
  - ranguna 1y ago
    I think both you and the OP are ends of the same spectrum.
- npteljes 1y ago
  What do you use to look for products, and businesses? I also use chatbots much more, but these are two categories where I found search engines to be much better. But I haven't really looked for an alternative either.
benbristow 1y ago
Did a search for 'test', says results are cached from 6 days ago. When we've got LLMs with real-time search now this seems a bit... backward. Not that the results for that specific query would change much.
jxjnskkzxxhx 1y ago
If people search CSAM, do they serve it? Isn't that criminal?
- 38 1y ago
  [flagged]
- freehorse 1y ago
  You mean if google serves it?
  - jxjnskkzxxhx 1y ago
    I'm talking about the search engine in question.
    - freehorse 1y ago
      The "search engine in question" is using the google api. If the search engine in question serves it means that google actually serves it. Thus I am a bit suspicious of the motivation behind this kind of question; why do you pose it for mullvad and not for any other search engine?
      - jxjnskkzxxhx 1y ago
        I don't know anything about the subject. But in my mind it kind of made sense that serving illegal stuff is somehow worse if you can't identify the users (eg if police has a warrant) compared to if you can.
- areyourllySorry 1y ago
  there is no image search.
pipes 1y ago
What is it?
zaggynl 1y ago
How does this compare to say, startpage.com?
- nobody42 1y ago
  Isn't owned by advertising company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startpage#Merger_and_recent_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startpage#Merger_and_recent_hi...
scdnc 1y ago
I don't care much about that anymore because their VPN service has really gone bad. They are great in terms of privacy, but in every other aspect, they suck. Their VPN randomly disconnects again and again, once even without the killswitch being activated. They are getting blocked from websites much more often than other VPNs, making the service barely usable while costing a lot more. Plus, there are many other minor issues. I really hope they improve because I want to keep using them
- pixxel 1y ago
  [dead]
- DavideNL 1y ago
  > their VPN randomly disconnects again and again, once even without the killswitch being activated. I have no idea which OS you are on, but for me it has been working flawlessly for many years, on iOS (using WireGuard.) One exception: Apple blocking their services when using a VPN IP-address, on macOS. But that's an Apple issue of course... Even years back, when Proton still had frequent connection/App issues, my phone using Mullvad was very reliable, and hasn't failed even once.
- mltsd 1y ago
  Disabling Wireguard obfuscation and quantum resistant tunnels fixed the disconnects for me, which is fine for my use-case, but they shouldn't be enabled by default if they're causing issues
SergeAx 1y ago
Wait, Google doesn't have a Search API!
alcover 1y ago
> Leta is also useless if your browser blocks all cookies, tracking pixels and other tracking technologies. Err.. it would still be useful to mask your IP ?
mmooss 1y ago
Where does it say how it handles user information - what it collects, how long it's retained, what it's used for? I would expect Mullvad to say they collect none, but is that said anywhere? Is there any privacy policy? Edit: All it says is that they protect us from Google and Brave: > When a search isn't in the cache, our server (leta.mullvad.net) queries the search engines on your behalf. Only the search query is sent; no personal data is shared. and > Returned search results contain only direct links to the final destination. All tracking elements and third-party content are removed to protect your privacy.
reustle 1y ago
A simple explanation of what this does, shown somewhere on the page, would go a long way.
pshirshov 1y ago
Awesome. Maybe it's just my imagination, but it seems like there is much less crap and the relevancy seems to be much higher even then I choose Google as the underlying engine. Switched default search in my FF to this.
slimebot80 1y ago
I wish I could set Safari to use this as the search Not sure why they limit the choice

Mullvad Leta

379 points by microflash 1y ago

dangoodmanUT 1y ago

Aren't these APIs absurdly expensive? How are they justifying these costs, or are they using "unofficial" APIs?

jdpedrie 1y ago
Brave has a subscription tier that offers storage rights. But it's ~9x the cost of their normal Pro subscription. I have a hard time imagining that the cost works out in their favor (discounting the possibility of a special arrangement) with how long the query stream tail is in web search.

icar 1y ago

I'm surprised this is created using NodeJS. Given how critical performance is in a proxy, and that RAM is precious running Redis.

VonGuard 1y ago

Mullvad swinging for the fences suddenly. They have a billboard in South San Francisco, too. Did they get a cash infusion? Why all of the sudden are they expanding? Honestly, I'd have changed the name by now...

oscarmoxon 1y ago
They're also littering the London tube system with ads - there's definitely been a lottery win or a series A.
- parkaboy 1y ago
  They were one of the earliest to adopt bitcoin and monero payments--if they didn't convert all those payments immediately to cash, they're probably sitting pretty right now.
  - dijit 1y ago
    They also have a partnership with Tailscale that can't be undersold. I'm not sure how much it adds to their bottom line for each sale, but my corp was using the Mullvad VPN addition to tailscale to do global testing by our developers. IE; "is something blocked, do we detect GEOIP properly" etc;
    - george_perez 1y ago
      And Mozilla VPN as well.
    - haiku2077 1y ago
      The Tailscale integration is super handy while traveling. One app to access my home server and my home region.
- unfitted2545 1y ago
  And whole buses!
- noir_lord 1y ago
  Now’s a good time since the online safety bill kicks in towards end of July. UK use of VPN’a outside the office/work environment is gonna skyrocket.
- kfreds 1y ago
  > there's definitely been a lottery win or a series A We have neither won the lottery nor taken on outside investment. We've been growing for years, and we've reached a point where we can afford campaigns like this. It is an interesting experiment by our marketing team. Still, I think people on HN overestimate the cost of campaigns like this.
jjice 1y ago
Curious why the name change suggestion. Honestly, I immediately thought of the Seinfeld episode where Jerry forgets the woman’s name. > Mullva?
- fernandotakai 1y ago
  kind of of topic, but i had to google to find out which female part rhymed with dolores, because it made no sense to me (as an ESL). (for people wondering, it's clitoris). https://seinfeld.fandom.com/wiki/The_Junior_Mint https://seinfeld.fandom.com/wiki/The_Junior_Mint https://seinfeld.fandom.com/wiki/Dolores https://seinfeld.fandom.com/wiki/Dolores
  - philsnow 1y ago
    In (American, at least) English, there's a very common pattern of vowel reduction on unstressed syllables, resulting in "schwa-ification" [0][1] where all such vowels become indistinguishable from each other. In this case, we say "duh lorr uhss" instead of "do lor ez". The second one doesn't sound like clitoris at all, but the first one.. okay it doesn't sound similar to me either, but it's closer at least. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_phonology#Unstressed_syllables https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_phonology#Unstressed_s... [1] "schwa" is the name of the mid, central, unrounded vowel, IPA [ə]
  - trealira 1y ago
    I have to say that, the vast majority of the time, the way I've heard and said the word "clitoris" doesn't rhyme at all with "Dolores," so I wouldn't have been able to guess it either.
holysoles 1y ago
based on their company about page, looks like Leta has existed since 2023 https://mullvad.net/en/about https://mullvad.net/en/about
Barbing 1y ago
Yes, it’s gotta be something catchy. Like “Rakuten”!
bosse 1y ago
I noticed their billboards and bus ads in New York City a year ago, so it’s not entirely new that they are marketing like this.
- al_borland 1y ago
  Same, but on the train at the DC airport. I liked that they align their actions with their mission. Physical ads like this are perfect way to advertise a privacy tool, as their ads respect user privacy.
prophesi 1y ago
They prefer outdoor ads over targeted online advertising https://mullvad.net/en/blog/advertising-that-targets-everyone https://mullvad.net/en/blog/advertising-that-targets-everyon...
tomxor 1y ago
I had to switch to iVPN last year (similar ethos), because Mullvad became pretty much unusable due to blacklisting and laggy DNS servers. I'm assuming it has something to do with the push in recent years to expand their userbase, but they don't seem to be able to keep a clean enough pool of IPs like the big popular ones to cope. I know all VPNs struggle with this but it was getting ridiculous, where every single server in a country would receive infinite re-captcha.
- lysace 1y ago
  Not quite my experience. > where every single server in a country would receive infinite re-captcha. What does that even mean? Have you also disabled cookies? Typically it's a Cloudflare captcha if you're doing that, not a re-captcha. And afaik pretty much everyone gets this treatment with zero history. Welcome to the modern web.
  - zargon 1y ago
    They’re referring to the situation when a service has blacklisted you, but will pretend they haven’t and give you captcha after captcha to keep you busy.
    - tomxor 1y ago
      Yup, I found a shortcut to determining this is to use the audio option, which will instantly admit you are blocked due to "suspicious network activity" rather than make you solve stuff - i guess because of accessibility?
  - encom 1y ago
    >Welcome to the modern web. Cloudflare recently started holding stackoverflow hostage as well. "Weird" OS + "weird" browser + cookie autodelete = www is hell, even on clearnet. I hate cloudflare so much it's unreal, including everyone who works for them, for enabling this nonsense.
- INTPenis 1y ago
  iVPN is a great choice in terms of security, they also use STboot, but I think you're just flying under the radar with their IPs because they struggle with the same problems as Mullvad.
RemainsOfTheDay 1y ago
I've been seeing Mullvad billboards for years, including in Paris.
JCattheATM 1y ago
My concern is that when they can advertise to the extent they do, to what extent can they really be trusted? Anything that popular is going to be a target by law enforcement, and we really have no way of verifying any of their claims.
- sillyfluke 1y ago
  Yeah, this advertising to the masses push makes me queasy. It has the reverse effect on me than was intended. Weird brand self-harm for a privacy/data hygiene oriented company.
kfreds 1y ago
> Did they get a cash infusion? Why all of the sudden are they expanding? No cash infusion. We've been growing for years, just like many other VPN services. We're still quite a bit smaller than e.g. Nord and Express though. As for our choice of advertising, we don't run an affiliate program, nor do we want to track our customers through online ads, so we're trying this instead. It's cheaper than you might think. // Fredrik (cofounder of Mullvad)
- reisse 1y ago
  Sorry for hijacking the thread, but I'm too curious not to ask: is having censorship circumvention out of the box a non-goal for Mullvad? Because there are VPNs with good censorship circumvention tech, and there are VPNs with good privacy guarantees, but I know none which can provide both. What Mullvad offers now is either a decade old stuff which is blocked even by subpar DPI solutions, or a set of (more modern) protocol bridges which are painful to setup and sometimes IP-banned.
  - kfreds 1y ago
    Mullvad's mission is to make mass surveillance AND online censorship ineffective. So yes, we do intend to offer excellent censorship circumvention out of the box. Having said that we have clearly prioritized privacy for a long time. For what it's worth we have several censorship improvements on the roadmap. Stay tuned.
    - _lvbh 1y ago
      I already see shadowsocks which is nice. I'm still forced to use V2ray and xray-core in some rejoins though so I route traffic from my device -> xray -> my server -> wireguard mullvad. Works for now I suppose. Also been experimenting with routing small amounts of traffic through the syncthing relay network since they have relays running locally which may be in less restrictive provinces
      - kfreds 1y ago
        Interesting. Try reaching out to Mullvad's support as well if you haven't done so already. If I'm not mistaken they conduct censorship circumvention experiments from time to time together with customers. I'm sure they'd also be interested to hear about any long-term resilient low-bandwidth channels you've found, such as the syncthing relay network. Those are very useful for bootstrapping and configuration updates.
NalNezumi 1y ago
I really hope they don't change the name, I like the name "Mullvad" (Mole in Swedish) and "Leta" (Search in Swedish) and everything doesn't need to be Anglo centric in the appeal :) Although the society is almost zero privacy, it have historically had some funny IT figures for privacy and digital issues so people searching up for the background of the name might stumble upon it. [1] https://youtu.be/rHVVpNRwLk0?feature=shared https://youtu.be/rHVVpNRwLk0?feature=shared [2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnhof https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnhof [3] Peter Löthberg https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1d8056g/comment/l73thz7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1d8056g/comm... [4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay
- SahAssar 1y ago
  I'm guessing they won't change the name. It's a similar branding strategy as ikea, with "funny" nordic (specifically swedish, but other brands have done it with norweigan and danish too) names that for some people makes it sound quaint and quality.

esafak 1y ago

Mods: Consider adding to the title: A privacy focused search engine I quoted their FAQ; it's not editorializing: https://leta.mullvad.net/faq https://leta.mullvad.net/faq

microflash 1y ago
I did add that description but seems like it was edited by mods.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
  I presume that's because calling it privacy-focused is considered editorializing. I'd at least hope it can have "(search engine)" or similar because I had no idea what it was before clicking.
  - microflash 1y ago
    Yeah. I usually stick to original titles and don't editorialize them, except when the title itself does not make it obvious what it is about.
  - glenstein 1y ago
    I had assumed it was Mullvad announcing their own LLM.
Barbing 1y ago
Right, one that by my understanding “pools” searches, in a way. As their blog put it in 2023: “Mullvad Leta uses the Google Search API as a proxy, caching each search. These cached results are shared amongst all users, reducing costs and improving privacy. This service is user-supported and doesn't rely on ads or data selling.”
- blibble 1y ago
  I thought the google search and bing API terms explicitly forbade you from caching the results for more than a short period of time exactly to stop people doing this

DrZeina 1y ago

I am extremely excited about this and thus far it seems to work well.

taco_emoji 1y ago

Unfortunately, this is blocked at many places of work because of the domain, unlike DDG

freehorse 1y ago
I am curious, why would a workplace block the mullvad.net domain? Or is it rather a whitelist thing?
- skyyler 1y ago
  People use VPN services at workplaces to circumvent web filters.
- hypeatei 1y ago
  "proxy avoidance" is the listed reason on my corporate network.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  IDK, why do some workplaces ban Steam domain? Or block Mozilla but not Chrome? IT people are weird.
- npteljes 1y ago
  Many workplaces use a corporate firewall, and on the admin panel, they can enable-disable categories of websites, like "Porn", "Adult themes", "Gambling", "Social", "Video streaming", "AI", etc. One of the categories could be "VPN", *.mullvad.net can fall into it, and it could be that they disabled that category. At many workplaces, it's against the rules to circumvent the company's monitoring, and so, many of such technologies are banned.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago
    Which is a killer because so many developer tools are on “naughty” domains (eg .dev and .ai) which are automatically blocklisted

rasengan 1y ago

This isn't really privacy or security focused unless 'trust' is a component of security architecture. Make no mistake, Mullvad Leta knows what you searched for and who you are. /Theater/ has no place in privacy. The right way to do it, short of FHE, is to encrypt the query client side, pass this to the proxy which does not pass the source IP, which passes this to the search engine for decryption. Search results are encrypted and pass thru in the reverse: Client (encrypts) -> Proxy (passes thru no IP) -> Search engine (receives, decrypts, performs, and encrypts results) -> Proxy passes encrypted blob of results back to user -> Client privately reviews private search results. Edit: private.sh tried this in the past but unfortunately was shuttered with the end of gigablast.

huslage 1y ago
Mullvad has built trust over many years. There is always someone who knows what you are searching for. The search engine will not accept an opaque blob of encrypted data as a search term, after all.
- rasengan 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - freehorse 1y ago
    > if all parties wish to increase the privacy Agreed that the conclusion is that not all parties want to increase privacy. Thus there is at least one party that does not want to increase privacy. But we already know that google does not want to increase privacy. Thus this does not show that mullvad does not want to increase privacy.
  - conorjh 1y ago
    [dead]
- bitpush 1y ago
  The trust comes from them being a small player. The moment they get big, govt will come knocking, and they'll be just like anyone else.

mtlynch 1y ago

They run Leta on diskless servers, just like the VPN: >We run the Leta servers on STBooted RAM only servers, the same as our VPN servers. These servers run the latest Ubuntu LTS, with our own stripped down custom Mullvad VPN kernel which we tune in-house to remove anything unnecessary for the running system. > >The cached search results are stored in an in-memory Redis key / value store. This is surprising given that they try to cache results for 30 days: >Each search that has not already been cached is saved in RAM for 30 days. The idea is that the more searches performed, the larger and more substantial the cached results become, therefore aiding with privacy. That's surprising because presumably they lose all results if they have to reboot the server. With a VPN service, there's not much they have to store past the lifetime of the VPN session, but if they're storing search results for 30 days, I wonder how they deal with this? Maybe best effort is fine because they don't strictly need to cache the results, as it just provides marginal privacy improvements.

KoolKat23 1y ago
yes, they state in the FAQ, any updates to the system clear the cache. Caching is due to query cost.
- bravetraveler 1y ago
  Cost that's external, too: Brave or Google are behind the results. Things would be terrible without the cache... but that doesn't mean every request needs to be cached. Can't - gotta source it. Wouldn't want to hang onto things too long, current events run out of currency :)
ignoramous 1y ago
> This is surprising ... as it just provides marginal privacy improvements. Diskless does not mean SSH-less or network-less. The "data" can be pulled / pushed just the same, which is to say, Diskless, in this case, is no better than verifiably read-only partitions (like on ChromeOS & Android, for example).
- mtlynch 1y ago

mrweasel 1y ago

Interesting solution to let the user pick which search engine to use. Sadly Bing is shutting down their API, it would have been great to be able to use that as well.

DaSHacka 1y ago
> Sadly Bing is shutting down their API Interesting, does DDG have plans to switch or start their own index?
- mrweasel 1y ago
  There are some provisions for their larger customers, see https://www.wired.com/story/bing-microsoft-api-support-ending/ https://www.wired.com/story/bing-microsoft-api-support-endin... (https://archive.ph/IVKGT https://archive.ph/IVKGT). So no DuckDuckGo and Ecosia won't lose their Bing backends.

chvid 1y ago

Fast, no ads, reasonable results. Well done!

bitpush 1y ago
and stale.

DbigCOX 1y ago

This is incredible actually.

meta_ai_x 1y ago

[flagged]

Ylpertnodi 1y ago
>Browsers, OSes and Knowledge Engines (search, llms) should 100% know about my tastes, my intelligence level, my interest level and absolutely render output based on my needs and input/output preference. What about the people that own the "[b]rowsers, OSes and....." etc, etc.
- DaSHacka 1y ago
  hijacking this reply to say I think that was the most HN-comment to ever grace this website, bravo.

superkuh 1y ago

Pretty much the only way to use google search as an HTML webpage instead of a JS web application these days. It's great. It reminds me of the scroogle.com proxy days. I use it for all but my retro machines, which is a shame. I know Mullvad is a 'privacy' company but I really wish they'd acknowledge that HTTP+HTTPS is more robust to governments' censorship than centralized CA TLS only. HTTP+HTTPS would allow my non-bleeding edge TLS retro machines to search again.

jsnell 1y ago

Previous discussions from the initial launch, 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36402162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36402162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35964397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35964397

PrivacyDingus 1y ago
2023, hug of death coming in 2025
dang 1y ago
Thanks! Macroexpanded: Mullvad Leta: A search engine used in the Mullvad Browser - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36402162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36402162 - June 2023 (142 comments) Mullvad Leta (Search Engine) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35964397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35964397 - May 2023 (32 comments)

nosioptar 1y ago

I was dumb enough to buy more than 30 days worth of mullvad once. They changed their terms of service to remove port forwarding. Because I'd paid more than 30 days ago, they wouldn't refund me anything. Screw mullvad. I'd have to be a damned fool to to ever trust them again.

DaSHacka 1y ago
Really? That's unfortunate, I heard of many people getting refunds back when they removed port forwarding.
- nosioptar 1y ago
  I didn't because I'd paid more than 30 days prior to the change.
Cerium 1y ago
I don't hold it against them, but I got burned by that change too; but it was entirely reasonable, allowing inbound provides abuse opportunities which degrade their primary service reputation.
- nosioptar 1y ago
  I wouldn't be mad, had they have been willing to refund since they changed the functionality.

napolux 1y ago

I'm using startpage.com, guess this is gonna replace it as soon as it matures a bit

dangus 1y ago

> Did you make your own search engine from scratch? > We did not, we made a front end to the Google and Brave Search APIs. So this is pointless, and honestly kind of lazy?

JanNash 1y ago
Is it pointless though if e.g. there are no ads?
- dangus 1y ago
  In a way, yes, because without ads or any kind of revenue source it's bound to be shut down.
  - areyourllySorry 1y ago
    enjoy it while it still works, then.
    - dangus 1y ago
      Why would I switch to a product that I know will fail and go away?
      - areyourllySorry 1y ago
        why should we enjoy life if we're going to die anyway?

Zefiroj 1y ago

I wonder how well the caching works. The FAQ says 30 days, so you might be getting a pretty stale result. That combined with Google's "fun fact: 15% of all Google searches have never been searched before", makes me wonder how identifying these queries can be.

deelowe 1y ago

I feel like the name "mullivad" might present challenges for user adoption.

PrivacyDingus 1y ago
current options are google, duckduckgo, bing, I think they'll be fine; what's in a name? and all that
DarkCrusader2 1y ago
Totally agree. Everything should be Americanized as much as possible so that it conforms to American sensibilities and is easier to use and understand for Americans. Who cares about languages and culture of few dozen people who does not live in AMERICA.
sakjur 1y ago
Am I (native Swedish speaker, so perhaps ignorant of secondary connotations here) missing something that should be obvious? Is mullvad inappropriate to some readers or is it just an odd name?
- nkurz 1y ago
  No, I don't think you are missing anything. As an English speaking American, it just strikes me as a strange name that I wouldn't immediately associate with a search engine. Note for example that the parent spelled it wrong despite that being the focus of his question. But there is no second level of meaning or innuendo that I'm seeing.

tiffanyh 1y ago

How is this different than using DDG with the “!g” ?

toast0 1y ago
Doesn't !g just redirect you to Google? From comments, this is proxying and potentially caching from Google. Having an intermediary is potentially of value.

xnx 1y ago

These alternative search engines really feel like they're fighting the last war. Web content is so reader-hostile that you need a tool to extract the answer/information you're looking for and not just give you a link to the page.

wetpaws 1y ago
[dead]
SirHumphrey 1y ago
I don’t actually. I have read far too many AI summaries where the llm combines data about two different people with the same name creating a biography of someone that doesn’t exist. And once the use of chatbots in this role becomes widespread- don’t think for a second that companies won’t sso the thing until it’s about as useful as current search.
- haiku2077 1y ago
  I had an issue where Slack AI combined multiple people I work with into a summary that was negative in tone. And of course there was no way to provide feedback on this harmful behavior.
hart_russell 1y ago
If the dead internet theory comes to fruition, I wonder if there will be "curated internets" where only good actors will be allowed to participate.

xyst 1y ago

Search engines are so hot rn. Reminds me of 1990s, 2000s. AskJeeves, anyone? \s I jest, but the focus on privacy is important. I used to use DDG but ended up using (and paying for) Kagi.

jonplackett 1y ago

This thing has been advertised EVERYWHERE in London the last few weeks. But the adverts didn’t make a lot of sense and I had no idea what the product actually did.

diggan 1y ago
I think it's a new/old marketing strategy. Make it interesting enough that people see and notice it but don't understand what it is, with the hopes that you go out to figure out what it is. A brave strategy, but since it's still around, I guess it works sometimes.
- Sammi 1y ago
  It incentivises people to ask each other about it. But you need high pervasiveness of the ad for two people to both have seen it and ask each other about it.
throw432196 1y ago
I still didn’t know what it was. Went to the headline link and had no idea, typed in “what is this”. Still no idea. I had to read the hn comments to discover it is a search proxy..

jeanlucas 1y ago

I'm sorry for being negative, but it feels to me just as a publicity stunt. No serious product, just a proxy for Google, while it is interesting not a real solution. But as a marketing tactic to promote your VPN it is an interesting move.

xlt 1y ago
A proxy for Google is a product if it provides additional features Google alone does not provide... in this case: Privacy
lolinder 1y ago
A caching proxy for Google is a real solution for a real problem. It might not be a solution to a problem you have.
- jeanlucas 1y ago
  It solves a problem for a niche that you assume I don't have. But it has no real way to monetize and is likely to be shut down as soon as the marketing/publicity objectives are not aligned anymore. That's what I was trying to point out.
  - mmooss 1y ago
    Maybe Mullvad has other interests too?
  - mystified5016 1y ago
    > No serious product, just a proxy for Google, while it is interesting not a real solution. Sure
skeaker 1y ago
Not sure what you mean by this, it is a real thing you can actually use so obviously it's not "just a publicity stunt."
- 1y ago

nalekberov 1y ago

From the FAQ page (https://leta.mullvad.net/faq https://leta.mullvad.net/faq) : > However, Leta is useless as a service if you use the perfect non-logging VPN, a privacy focussed DNS service, a web browser that resists fingerprinting, and correlation attacks from global actors. Leta is also useless if your browser blocks all cookies, tracking pixels and other tracking technologies. In other words everyone can benefit from it. I don't know any browser (not talking about obscure browsers like lynx) who can completely resist fingerprinting.

VTimofeenko 1y ago
Using an obscure browser that is not hiding its user agent is arguably worse for fingerprinting.
- nalekberov 1y ago
  Ironically yes.
haiku2077 1y ago
Mullvad makes a fingerprinting resistant browser. It uses tricks like displaying the content inside a smaller window to mimic popular laptops and phones. https://mullvad.net/en/browser https://mullvad.net/en/browser It's not perfect (it's firefox based so that already sticks out) but better than could be done otherwise.

smallerfish 1y ago

So how do they make money? Are they hoping to convert users to their VPN service? Or are they just trying to stay under the free tier Google API limits?

haiku2077 1y ago
Leta is the supported search engine of Mullvad Browser which is a privacy-centric version of Firefox that integrates with Mullvad VPN. Think Mullvad Browser:Regular Internet as Tor Browser:Onion websites. So this is part of an ecosystem for their VPN subscribers. (I'm a Mullvad customer, not Mullvad directly, but that's how I use their browser and Leta.)
prophesi 1y ago
In the past, Leta was a service that was only accessible to paid Mullvad users. I'm unsure when they started allowing general access, but that's initially how it made commercial sense.

idlip 1y ago

Why not embrace searxng^1. But sure I know brave and other would rate limit for it. What would be the difference from duckduckgo lite? https://docs.searxng.org/ https://docs.searxng.org/

jug 1y ago

> Leta aims to present a reliable and trustworthy way of searching privately on the internet. > Leta is also useless if your browser blocks all cookies, tracking pixels and other tracking technologies. Huh? This needed better clarification because the two points seem to be at odds with each other.

freehorse 1y ago
I assume if you block all tracking technologies it does not offer anything more than what you already have? Because then your queries cannot be tracked?
jsnell 1y ago
What they're saying is that if you had already closed off all possible methods of being tracked, you'd gain nothing from this service, since whatever other search engine you choose to use instead would by definition not be able to track you.

worldsavior 1y ago

I don't understand why Google or Brave are cooperating with this, they don't earn anything. And if they're not, what prevents Google blocking Mullvad IPs?

o_m 1y ago
Mullvad is paying to use their API's, like Kagi does. Google is making money on this https://leta.mullvad.net/faq#made-from-scratch https://leta.mullvad.net/faq#made-from-scratch
- worldsavior 1y ago
  Then how does Mullvad earns? This surely costs a lot of money to pay for Google search results.
  - akimbostrawman 1y ago
    Leta used to require a VPN subscription. They probably figured the cost weren't that high and the possible increase in future customer by offering it for free would at least cover or even outweight that cost.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
fr4nkr 1y ago
Google likely just doesn't care. They know most people won't bother using privacy-oriented services out of inconvenience or apathy.

thunder-blue-3 1y ago

This would've been a great product 10 years ago. I've unapologetically not had to use a search engine in almost a year (or at least can count on 1 hand having to use it) since GPT models have come out.

whizzter 1y ago
More than once people at work have asked me for help after not solving their problems with ChatGPT, and the solution was to google and hit some stackoverflow answer.
homebrewer 1y ago
The situation hasn't changed for most of us. None of the people I've talked to over the past couple of years have stopped using Google, none are using LLMs for anything other than translation (or helping proofread their English) or simply for wasting time. FWIW, since we're exchanging anecdotes, LLMs have been completely useless for me. I try them every 3-6 months and always return to Google disappointed.
- ranguna 1y ago
  I think both you and the OP are ends of the same spectrum.
npteljes 1y ago
What do you use to look for products, and businesses? I also use chatbots much more, but these are two categories where I found search engines to be much better. But I haven't really looked for an alternative either.

benbristow 1y ago

Did a search for 'test', says results are cached from 6 days ago. When we've got LLMs with real-time search now this seems a bit... backward. Not that the results for that specific query would change much.

jxjnskkzxxhx 1y ago

If people search CSAM, do they serve it? Isn't that criminal?

38 1y ago
[flagged]
freehorse 1y ago
You mean if google serves it?
- jxjnskkzxxhx 1y ago
  I'm talking about the search engine in question.
  - freehorse 1y ago
    The "search engine in question" is using the google api. If the search engine in question serves it means that google actually serves it. Thus I am a bit suspicious of the motivation behind this kind of question; why do you pose it for mullvad and not for any other search engine?
    - jxjnskkzxxhx 1y ago
      I don't know anything about the subject. But in my mind it kind of made sense that serving illegal stuff is somehow worse if you can't identify the users (eg if police has a warrant) compared to if you can.
areyourllySorry 1y ago
there is no image search.

pipes 1y ago

What is it?

zaggynl 1y ago

How does this compare to say, startpage.com?

nobody42 1y ago
Isn't owned by advertising company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startpage#Merger_and_recent_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startpage#Merger_and_recent_hi...

scdnc 1y ago

I don't care much about that anymore because their VPN service has really gone bad. They are great in terms of privacy, but in every other aspect, they suck. Their VPN randomly disconnects again and again, once even without the killswitch being activated. They are getting blocked from websites much more often than other VPNs, making the service barely usable while costing a lot more. Plus, there are many other minor issues. I really hope they improve because I want to keep using them

pixxel 1y ago
[dead]
DavideNL 1y ago
> their VPN randomly disconnects again and again, once even without the killswitch being activated. I have no idea which OS you are on, but for me it has been working flawlessly for many years, on iOS (using WireGuard.) One exception: Apple blocking their services when using a VPN IP-address, on macOS. But that's an Apple issue of course... Even years back, when Proton still had frequent connection/App issues, my phone using Mullvad was very reliable, and hasn't failed even once.
mltsd 1y ago
Disabling Wireguard obfuscation and quantum resistant tunnels fixed the disconnects for me, which is fine for my use-case, but they shouldn't be enabled by default if they're causing issues

SergeAx 1y ago

Wait, Google doesn't have a Search API!

alcover 1y ago

> Leta is also useless if your browser blocks all cookies, tracking pixels and other tracking technologies. Err.. it would still be useful to mask your IP ?

mmooss 1y ago

Where does it say how it handles user information - what it collects, how long it's retained, what it's used for? I would expect Mullvad to say they collect none, but is that said anywhere? Is there any privacy policy? Edit: All it says is that they protect us from Google and Brave: > When a search isn't in the cache, our server (leta.mullvad.net) queries the search engines on your behalf. Only the search query is sent; no personal data is shared. and > Returned search results contain only direct links to the final destination. All tracking elements and third-party content are removed to protect your privacy.

reustle 1y ago

A simple explanation of what this does, shown somewhere on the page, would go a long way.

pshirshov 1y ago

Awesome. Maybe it's just my imagination, but it seems like there is much less crap and the relevancy seems to be much higher even then I choose Google as the underlying engine. Switched default search in my FF to this.

slimebot80 1y ago

I wish I could set Safari to use this as the search Not sure why they limit the choice