From September 2023, we will be gradually rolling out our new unique search offer. This will happen over several months and won’t apply to everyone at the same time. This means that when you search through Ecosia, we work with either Microsoft Bing or, with your consent, Google to provide you with search results and ads. In order to do this, we automatically collect data required by search partners to prevent bot attacks and ad fraud - which includes your IP address and search terms.
For a growing number of users we can now provide Google results and advertisements. In order to supply these results and ads, Google requires a cookie to be set on your browser and access to your device’s local storage to store information. We will ask for your consent before doing this and if you do not agree, we will provide non-personalized results from Microsoft Bing.
In order to provide non-personalized Microsoft Bing results and ads, we are contractually obliged to implement Microsoft Clarity to capture how you use and interact with our website through behavioral metrics, as well as sharing your IP address and search terms. This behavioral data is captured in individual search sessions and is not tied to a user profile unless you consent. The processing of this data is necessary for the provision of our service. Although Ecosia does not use this information, it is used by Microsoft Bing for site and advertising optimization, as well as fraud protection. For more information about how Microsoft collects and uses your data, visit Microsoft’s privacy statement and Microsoft Clarity documentation.
Microsoft Bing does also offer personalized search results and ads. This service requires a cookie to be set on your browser which creates a personal profile. We will ask for your consent before enabling this and you can change your choice at any time in your cookie preferences. More information on cookies and how to take control of your preferences can be found in the “What about cookies?” section.
Been using Brave search for months now and pretty happy with it, also helps that they have their own index
Planting trees does not equal caring for young trees as they grow. By their standards I could throw a handful of walnuts out the window and claim I planted several trees.
I used it as my primary browser on my laptop/desktop. I supported the cause and through my usage I planted +150 trees, but the trade-off is steepening so I’m going to have to jump ship.
I’ll be pivoting to DuckDuckGo as my main search engine, and use Brave for more nuanced/specific results.
Wooof. I’ve started using Brave for less then 24 hours and I’m already jumping ship. Anyone backed by Peter Thiel is an immediate ‘no’ for me.
I’ll have to try Whoogle or SearXNG but search engines seem to regularly block my queries so that I only get random results from wikimedia. Maybe I can resolve the issues w/ self-hosting? Otherwise, I might just try to redirect most of my questions to open-source LLMs
I strongly advocate for Kagi. Yes, it’s paid search, but it means that there is no tracking or ad revenue concerns obfuscating the search results.
https://svmetasearch.eu.org/s/search
I use this one
I selfhost SearXNG via Unraid and have it plugged in as my default search engine in Firefox. Occasionally there might be an issue with one of the providers but I’ve found there’s usually an update pending that I just need to run which fixes the problem. I haven’t heard anything negative from my users as of yet though.
And DDG while you’re at it. At least if you wanna be concerned about CEOs.
A browser isn’t a search engine A browser isn’t a search engine A browser isn’t a search engine A browser isn’t a search engine A browser isn’t a search engine A browser isn’t a search engine A browser isn’t a search engine A browser isn’t a search engine
Tell us that you know absolutely nothing about Brave without saying that you know absolutely nothing about Brave
above
look up Brave search look up Brave search look up Brave search look up Brave search look up Brave search look up Brave search look up Brave search look up Brave search look up Brave search look up Brave search look up Brave search look up Brave search look up Brave search look up Brave search look up Brave search look up Brave search
With DuckDuckGo we get zero trees planted. It’s outside the EU too so although they have a relationship with US companies I hope that there are some protections around data transfer.
I don’t think so. They have commercial agreements with Microsoft that forces them to not block their trackers, so who knows what else they are obliged to by contract
For non-search tracker blocking (eg in our browser), we block most third-party trackers. Unfortunately our Microsoft search syndication agreement prevents us from doing more to Microsoft-owned properties. However, we have been continually pushing and expect to be doing more soon.
Say what you want about Brave, but at least they are moving to their own indexing. Where as DuckDuckGo is just Bing…
Also I’d take that anti-Brave link with a grain of salt. I’ve got a hunch it’s somehow connected back to a Vivaldi dev. So I’d view it as highly untrustworthy.
Since the comments are full of alternative usecases like ddg and brave search, I just leave this here:
So this is a search aggregator that searches across the main sites? And they’re hosted by individuals and I can create my own instance if I want?
That’s actually real cool
I’ll join in. Just signed up for the trial of Kagi after seeing an article on here and I’ve already subscribed. I don’t miss google at all and am excited to play with some of the innovating features (lenses look neat).
I’ve been testing it for a week or so after seeing it around the fediverse; my initial experience was bumpy (they truncate passwords at 71 characters, and while the registration page is supposed to notify you of that, it did not and let me complete registration with a much longer password, which then failed to login on other devices since the 71 char limit - this issue has been filed). But I have liked the results for all (30ish) queries except one, which was a very niche search. Even G didn’t really pull helpful answers, though it was better than Kagi.
Probably going to sub at the $5 tier after I use my trial searches.
Good way to lose the customer base.
When it comes to the environment they have no competition. I’m still with them.
If you look at it from another perspetive, someone like kagi takes a lot of pride in being lightweight in resource usage. I wonder if that has a comparable result on the environment
Comparable to planting 180 million trees? Plus, Ecosia’s servers run on renewable energy
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds to me like they don’t really have another option at the moment, and its Bing who is responsible for most of the changes.
Kagi uses its own crawler, right? But yeah, I expect DDG to follow Ecosia’s lead.
