Pass. Qwant has had its share of controversies, regardless their results aren’t better than DDG.
If Mozilla was serious about this they would run their own Searx instance and let people choose what engines they wanted to use.
DDG is inherently bad because it’s hosted in the USA and has to comply with those laws and gag orders. Nothing I’ve heard about Qwant makes it seem like a worse option.
Is this instance of searx safe (I cannot self host) Also how is its privacy and performance compared to DDG?
What I linked to is a listing of public Searx instances. You can look at the list and see things like uptime, where they are hosted, etc.
For performance I find it much better than DDG. In the settings page you can choose which search engines you wish to use, for example Brave, Stract, and Qwant. You can also tailor results by adding things like Lemmy, F-Droid, and Anna’s Archive.
Wtf is Qwant?
Edit: oh, OK, it’s a search engine. Next questions, what is the nature of the “partnership” and how is this better or different than DDG?
how is this better or different than DDG?
Qwant is using its own index
plus Bing. If I remember DDG only using Bing’s index and DDG started to censored results in 2022.Sometimes better search results than DDG (but about the same), EU based (France), offers a Openstreetmap based alternative to google maps (opposed to ddg using Apple Maps) and a slightly worse privacy policy are the main differences
what is the nature of the “partnership”
The partnership is entirely of monetary nature. Like all “partnerships” Mozilla has with 3rd parties that are integrated into Firefox.
That is their business concept. Those companies pay high amounts of money, and Mozilla adds their links into the browser or sends them “anonymized” usage statistics for advertisement purposes.
Right, then the question is, what’s Qwant’s business model. Where do they get the money from to send to Mozilla? I’m just always so suspicious that the users are the ones getting burned
what’s Qwant’s business model.
They sell search queries and meta data (IP address,user agent, etc.) to Microsoft for advertising purposes.
There’s no way Mozilla is replacing Google as the default, so what are they actually announcing here? I didn’t read any actual results thats happening. Are they just adding Qwant as an option in the search engine settings?
Too bad about the choice for qwant. I’ve been using them for many years and they have big flaws: they block visits from unsupported countries, so if you’re traveling, you’re fucked. They also started blocking ad blocking users and their main webpage is full of crap that you have to disable manually. Their support is non existing. And they use the same censorship as Microsoft. I moved to brave search recently
Searxng and you live happily
Looks interesting but I tried it and like most alternative engines, it’s bad and showing regional results for me. It’s good for English based searches but not in my lingo
Have you tried Kagi?
No, first time I hear about it
It’s a paid search engine, so their only priority is serving you good search results. It feels like using google before the 2012-ish enshittification.
Removed by mod
Thanks that solves it
This part of the post suggests that Qwant will not become the default search engine, but given the millions that Mozilla gets from Google it should not surprise anyone.
Did you know you could choose the search engine of your choice right from your Firefox URL bar?
Has anyone here used Qwant? I’ve seen it mentioned a handful of times but I’ve not tried it myself.
I had used it for a while in the past. The results were surprisingly good. I have moved to other search engines to experiment since then, but I have nothing bad to say about my time with Qwant.
I’ve been experimenting with other search engines recently so might give it a go.
Which search engines do you use now?
Brave Search currently, but I am still in the experimenting and search engine-hopping phase. Henceforth, Brave Search is not my final search engine, either.
Interesting. Which other ones have you tried? I’d be interesting in hearing what you thought of all of them!
I was trying Kagi but I’m put off it now that they’re partnering with Brendan Eich. I don’t think I’d use Brave search, for the same reason.
@dan I see, what’s the problam with Brendan Eich, is he the former Firefox CEO?
I’ve used it a long time now. I find it to have much more relevant results than DDG did last time I tried.
I would love to but it’s still unavailable in my country :/
This means Google isn’t paying the millions to be the default anymore??
Seems to be an awful news then, that money was useful for development and a default is trivial to change
I didn’t see a line that suggests they’re putting Qwant as default, only that they’re making it available as a search provider, just as DuckDuckGo and others are.
They say:
Did you know you could choose the search engine of your choice right from your Firefox URL bar?
Isn’t Qwant glorified Bing?
Isn’t Duckduckgo?
Doesn’t Mozilla rely on Google for default search? Does this change that relationship?
Doesn’t Mozilla rely on Google for default search?
and money…mainly the money.
Does this change that relationship?
Unknown at this time.
Yeah… Things like this partnership, plus publishing posts against things Google is doing (https://blog.mozilla.org/en/privacy-security/googles-protected-audience-protects-advertisers/), might spook Google a bit. Mozilla rely on receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from Google every year. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
The fact that Mozilla is so dependent on Google is the actual problem here, diversifying where they get funding from is precisely what they should be doing going forward.
I definitely agree with you, but finding another partner to get hundreds of millions of dollars per year isn’t trivial.
Sure, but finding more partners is crucial for long term survival, so if Mozilla never reaches out to anybody for fear of offending Google then they’re always gonna be stuck in this sort of abusive relationship. Becoming so reliant on Google in the first place shouldn’t have happened, but it’s better to start fixing that sooner than later. It’s also worth noting that the main reason Google funds FF is to protect themselves from antitrust litigation. As long as FF is around and gets a bit of usage, then Google can point to it to say that Chrome isn’t a browser monopoly.
But is Qwant going to be default?
this is sick, love qwant and hope this gives them more resources
It started appearing in my search engines list after every update and I remove it from the list every time.
Why?
Because thats imposed and I find myself comfortable with DDG. If I wanted Qwant, I would have added it myself.
Why should they keep adding it every update?
