Also that one has been posted quite a few times. But fret not! From upvotes I gather some found this for the first time and that is always positive ;)

[–] Creat@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

It has been posted a dozen times I feel. Like twice a week or something. Let's just say people who are in here have probably seen it.

It also still lists proton mail, despite the CEO recently Trump-simping, and the questionable history in other regards.

[–] jodanlime@midwest.social 8 points 17 hours ago (5 children)

Anybody try qwant? I'm giving it a quick try because this is the first I'm hearing about it. Seems alright?

[–] Libb@jlai.lu 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

I would have liked to use it (it's French, like me ;) but since they sell ads and I refuse to see ads (and I'd rather not see my data being collected in order to sell ads)... I don't use them.

[–] Phytobus@lemm.ee 5 points 17 hours ago

I've been using it for the past two weeks and its great! In my experience the search results are as good or sometimes better than google. It lacks the AI and tooltips of google so you get less visual bloat and nonesense, but you do have to actually go to one of the results to find your answer, so it takes slightly more time but you also get more/better context.

I tried ecosia and duckduckgo before but ended up going back to google due to the better results. But qwant is much better and i dont see myself going back to google.

[–] Bogasse@lemmy.ml 3 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Meh 🤷

They were historically completely dependent on Bing (like most other search engines) and while they continued putting some efforts in building their own index, they're nowhere close to it.

They also recently made a few moves to push advertising and to compromise with privacy (eg. the option to create tracked account to access some AI services).

On the other hands they will probably be more respectful than Google, and the quality of Google's results seems to be degrading faster than Qwant is improving 🤷

I'd guess Ecosia is in a similar situation. I've personally been using Kagi for a while but recent events make me consider moving to a European alternative too.

[–] Elrecoal19_0@lemmy.world 4 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

iirc Ecosia and Qwant were working on a search engine to substitute Google, or at least give it competition

[–] Bogasse@lemmy.ml 3 points 8 hours ago

Yeah that's what was announced but sadly I don't think any consequent investment has been made.

[–] Comtief@lemm.ee 2 points 16 hours ago

I've been using it for a week, haven't got into a situation yet where I need to go back to Google to find something. Only negative I can say is that the search didn't work a few times, but trying again fixed it.

[–] Lazycog@sopuli.xyz 3 points 17 hours ago

I remember hearing about them trying with another european search engine to build up their own search indexer, so I'm hopeful!

I like the UI but atleast for me the search results were not relevant enough to use at work.

[–] Wabbitsmiles@lemmy.world 5 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Any alternatives to Etsy and Kickstarter?

[–] Lazycog@sopuli.xyz 3 points 8 hours ago

This is such a good question I feel like it could be its own post!

As far as I know about Etsy: sadly not :(

Etsy had direct competitors from Germany and France for example, but Etsy ended up buying them...

I read about that here in competitor section: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etsy

[–] quantum_splash@jlai.lu 4 points 17 hours ago

Hum... Good idea, but poor UX.