without stupid adblockblock https://archive.is/whZuI
also i wouldn’t install their extension just for that, you can edit your default search engine to anu address you want in the settings
browser extensions are a huge privacy risk and i wouldn’t trust ddg with my data because of their Microsoft deal, not to block their trackers (they reverted that part after the backlash) in the ddg browser and to only show msn under their news tab in regular ddg
I switched to MetaGer long ago. No AI bullshit, no trackers, no ads, you pay a pittance per search to cover the costs of your search. I started using it 8 months ago and i still haven’t used up the 10€ i charged my account with. They are run by a non-profit, and it’s FOSS under AGPL3.
Does it work as well as Google before it became absolute shit?
Per default it uses Brave’s index, Mojeek’s index and Google’s Index via Serper. You can switch off whatever index you do not want. It also respects quotes and +/- in searches. There are no sponsored search results. You can open pages using their anonymous proxy when clicking “Open Anonymously”. This is a Screenshot of a search using Brave and Google’s Index.
Oh, i thought they had their own index, then i guess that a local SearXNG instance with a proxy will do…
They don’t have their own index, but they implement a whole lot of other indexes (Scopia, Yahoo, Bing, Wikis, YaCy, Netluchs, Exalead, Yandex, Die ZEIT, OneNewspage, Infotiger). The 3 big indexes are the ones that charge metager for providing search results, and those costs are what you pay for, and since it’s a non-profit (https://suma-ev.de/), the costs are close to what you would pay if you had access to API pricing.