So do you use Google as your main search engine?

[The Annoyed Man]

No, and yes. I recently switched to using Startpage https://startpage.com/eng/

I gather that it uses Google as a source, but its more private. They don't store your searches, for example. You use it...when you're done, the results are gone. I don't really have anything to hide, I just don't like some company storing info on me about random stuff in my life. The government already has enough info as it is.

Sorry.....I know you said it's private, but I still had to poke a little fun.

[TexasGal]

I also use Startpage. But will look into the others too.

[anygunanywhere]

https://duckduckgo.com/

Anygunanywhere

[jimlongley]

I miss Lycos.

[Jaguar]

I quit using Google long ago, mostly for privacy reasons. I like duckduckgo.com and recommend it to anyone.

[Abraham]

What 'guarantee' does anyone have that other search engines are going to preserve confidentiality or privacy or tracking or whatever in a manner that is somehow superior to Google?

I'm not defending Google, but if the guarantee assured by other search engines that 'they' can be trusted more than Google, my 'red flag' meter starts waving like mad...

[The Annoyed Man]

I'm actually a paid Google subscriber. Since they process all of my email, they already know more about me than I can imagine. I'm not worried about it.

[92f-fan]

Keep in mind all these start up pages are simply reusing the indexes of the big boys

Duckduckgo gets results from Google as well - they just dont promote it
"DuckDuckGo gets its results from over 50 sources, including DuckDuckBot (our own crawler), crowd-sourced sites (in our own index), Yahoo! (through BOSS), embed.ly, WolframAlpha, EntireWeb, Bing, Yandex, and Blekko. For any given search, there is usually a vertical search engine out there that does a better job at answering it than a general search engine. Our long-term goal is to get you information from that best source, ideally in instant answer form.

You will notice that the results of our sources and our results are often very different. That's because we have an intelligence layer on top that attempts to improve upon results provided by external sources. Not only do we try to pick the best source and use it in the best manner, but we also do other things like remove spam, re-rank, provide instant answers and add official sites on top, among other things.

While our indexes are getting bigger, we do not expect to be wholly independent from third-parties. Bing and Google each spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year crawling and indexing the deep Web. It costs so much that even big companies like Yahoo and Ask are giving up general crawling and indexing. Therefore, it seems silly to compete on crawling and, besides, we do not have the money to do so. Instead, we've focused on building a better search engine by concentrating on what we think are long-term value-adds -- having way more instant answers, way less spam, real privacy and a better overall search experience."

One more question to ask when picking a provider is
How do they make $$
You may not care -
but if they dont make $$ the legit way maybe they make it other ways OR they may be out of business ...

[Panda]

I worship a risen King. The world, which I am in, but not of, is going to do whatever it does. If I only did business with people who genuinely worshipped Jesus today, I'd have to drop most of my business connections, including from people who self-identify as at least nominal Christians. I worshipped today, and didn't notice Google because I was focused on my King.

If the outraged bloggers had been focused on Jesus instead of worldly distractions, they would have never noticed the secular history lesson on Google. It reminds me of an old joke about the difference between denomination A and B. The people from church A say hello when the run into each other in the liquor store.

[Abraham]

92f-fan,

Thanks for the info - Very impressive.

Only one problem, I don't speak computer/internet or whatever jargon best describes what you posted. (and I'll bet I'm not the only one...)

Please, what you had to say (for the most part) was not only opaque to me, a large portion of it rang of market-speak. Another language with which I have trouble...

So, for us non computer, hairy knuckle dragger types - plain English would make what you had to say understandable.

If you would be so kind: Reword it for a fourth grader please.

Hhhmmm, maybe a first grader would be more appropriate...

[wheelgun1958]

For extra security use tor browser.

[92f-fan]

92f-fan,

Thanks for the info - Very impressive.

Only one problem, I don't speak computer/internet or whatever jargon best describes what you posted. (and I'll bet I'm not the only one...)

Please, what you had to say (for the most part) was not only opaque to me, a large portion of it rang of market-speak. Another language with which I have trouble...

So, for us non computer, hairy knuckle dragger types - plain English would make what you had to say understandable.

If you would be so kind: Reword it for a fourth grader please.

Hhhmmm, maybe a first grader would be more appropriate...

LOL Ok
Ill try
A search engine uses VERY complicated software and VERY expensive hardware to look at EVERY page of text on the internet and assign it a rank and keep track of what every page says.

When you do a search, the search engines ( google - yahoo - msn - dog pile etc ) all try to find the pages on the internet that BEST meet what you are looking for based on their software and how much of the internet they have indexed and the last time the index was updated.

Googles index "spiders" ( the software that does the indexing ) for example probably indexes this site every day since it changes every day. Can you imagine how many servers you would need to be able to update even 10% of the internet every day ?

The new guys in the business, like dog pile and the others, don't have the monster piles of $$ to hire the people to write new search software. And they don't have the $$ to buy football fields full of servers to do the indexing. Google has decades of experience and infrastructure to build their index. So what the small guys do is, they use the search results from the big names and they redisplay the results in a different order. IN many cases they PAY for the rights to use the index.

Here is link to pictures from inside one of Google Data centers
http://www.amusingplanet.com/2012/10/in ... nters.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Google makes money from search to pay for the servers and software, by selling ads, and by selling access to the data they collect. The small guys have to make money some how. If they arent collecting data OR selling ads. Then how to they pay the light bill ? If you follow the money you MAY find that the little guy isnt being honest or transparent with what they are doing or how they are making money.

The question you have to ask is, who has more to lose by screwing you by misusing your data ? Google or some fly by night ? Im not saying to trust Google. Im saying that I trust them MORE than some small upstart that will do ANYTHING to succeed.

[Abraham]

92f-fan,

Thank you for your explanation.

As noted earlier, I'm walking with a mental limp regarding things computer/internet, but if I understood correctly - regarding the more obscure search engines and the promises they make, like greater confidentiality with personal information, etc, a heapin/helpin of dubious should be factored into the equation...

Of course, pledges made by any entity should be looked at squint-eyed...