What is your favorite internet search engine and why?

[Moem]

Google for less complicated use.

In what way do you feel that the others are more complicated to use?

[KBD47]

Question for you folks: I just went and deleted all my Google activity and was surprised to see all my Startpage searches were listed there. That kind of undoes the entire reason for using Startpage search. I'm wondering if they had that because I had searched within Chrome and they just scarf up that info anyway, or have my isp address and it doesn't make a difference what search engine I use within Chrome? I was surprised Google had my Startpage searches. Is there no way to get free of this monolithic beast? I'm solely using Duck Duck Go now as no searches showed up from that search engine. Just very surprised my Startpage searches showed up in my Google activity.

[DAMIEN1307]

this is of great interest to me personally since i also use startpage, but i have it strapped to the opensource chromium browser, not proprietory Google Chrome browser...you mentioned that you..."deleted all my Google activity"...so my question would be, do you still have a google acct. such as gmail etc. and do you actually have yourself signed into a google acct. of any sort while searching online with the startpage search engine?...are you using startpage, strapped to Google Chrome browser and not Chromium or some other open source browser?...the reason i ask this is because i closed out ALL of my google accts. including its gmail etc. years ago...how and where and what entity did you access to clear all your google activity from?...this info will be invaluable to know in order to figure out why this is happening to you...DAMIEN

[Hoser Rob]

Startpage HTTPS. I've always gotten better search results from it.

[KBD47]

this is of great interest to me personally since i also use startpage, but i have it strapped to the opensource chromium browser, not proprietory Google Chrome browser...you mentioned that you..."deleted all my Google activity"...so my question would be, do you still have a google acct. such as gmail etc. and do you actually have yourself signed into a google acct. of any sort while searching online with the startpage search engine?...are you using startpage, strapped to Google Chrome browser and not Chromium or some other open source browser?...the reason i ask this is because i closed out ALL of my google accts. including its gmail etc. years ago...how and where and what entity did you access to clear all your google activity from?...this info will be invaluable to know in order to figure out why this is happening to you...DAMIEN

Go here:
https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity
My best guess is that if you are signed into Chrome, and perhaps Chromium, Google is hoovering up everything you do while online. I'm going to avoid using Chrome/Chromium and stick with Firefox and DuckDuckGo from now on. It may be possible that if you don't sign into Chrome/Chromium you can limit Google's reach. But if you sign into any Google service while using it they may still have you. I'm using Ublock Origin and DuckDuckGo privacy essentials, so hopefully I will stay free of Google's online reach.

[DAMIEN1307]

it seems you answered your own question here...if your signed into google in any way, there "privacy policy" allows them to play hoover vacuum cleaner on all your searches, info etc...i dont use them nor have any accts. with them so dont have this particular problem...i also use ublock as well as privacy badger and no google analytics...DAMIEN

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https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/no-google-analytics/biloomoaibballahalljciajlggomgel

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https://policies.google.com/privacy

[DAMIEN1307]

well folks, it looks like google finally fessed up to what i suspected all along...if you sign into google mail or youtube etc, then you have signed into all of googles vacuum cleaner suck it all up "services"...they even confess to the fact that if you do not "properly" sign out, then it continues to keep you signed in...DAMIEN

https://www.techradar.com/news/chrome-6 ... heck-gmail

https://fossbytes.com/google-chrome-aut ... y-at-risk/

[DAMIEN1307]

also take note that firefox has a new bug that can freeze not just the browser but the entire OS...DAMIEN

https://www.techradar.com/news/new-fire ... -and-linux

https://fossbytes.com/this-firefox-bug- ... and-linux/

[snowflake]

also take note that firefox has a new bug that can freeze not just the browser but the entire OS...DAMIEN

Given the alternative, I'll take my Firefox buggy lols

[BigEasy]

Really if OS hangs then OS is buggy, not application.

[DAMIEN1307]

hi bigeasy...if you follow all the links in articles, you will see that firefox acknowledges that it is a browser bug causing the problem and not the OSs involved...they have added it to their firefox bug tracking platform...DAMIEN

[BG405]

it looks like google finally fessed up to what i suspected all along

This shows that Google are vulnerable to (at least some of) the privacy vulnerabilities they've foisted on us. They have to admit it because we'll find out anyway.

BTW. Wanted to help out someone in another thread but the picture is hosted on Google Drive. In order to view, I would have to unblock all their scripts & allow Google's "search engine" full access to my browser, as I don't currently have a way to control scripts per tab - and run 330 lines of code, just to display a picture.

It'll be interesting to read through the code on a Google search page & compare it with, for example, a DuckDuckGo page & perhaps Startpage.

[DAMIEN1307]

hi bg405...the part of google that they want to be really enabled to view this is, content.googleapis.com,...i use both ublock origin as well as privacy badger and besides blocking their analytics i also block all of google with the badger and only will open whatever single entity is necessary to view something like that...that is the one i opened just long enough to view it...here is just a list thus far that google uses for tracking etc. that are presently blocked with just what the badger picks up so far...DAMIEN

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ajax.googleapis.com✖

content.googleapis.com✖

googleads.g.doubleclick.net✖

fonts.googleapis.com✖

google-analytics.com✖

www.google-analytics.com✖

google.com✖

google.co.jp✖

accounts.google.com✖

adservice.google.com✖

apis.google.com✖

books.google.com✖

calendar.google.com✖

checkout.google.com✖

clients1.google.com✖

clients6.google.com✖

consent.google.com✖

cse.google.com✖

developers.google.com✖

docs.google.com✖

8.docs.google.com✖

drive.google.com✖

feedburner.google.com✖

feedproxy.google.com✖

fusiontables.google.com✖

groups.google.com✖

kh.google.com✖

khms0.google.com✖

khms1.google.com✖

khms2.google.com✖

khms3.google.com✖

khms4.google.com✖

labs.google.com✖

maps.google.com✖

maps-api-ssl.google.com✖

mapsengine.google.com✖

mt0.google.com✖

mt1.google.com✖

mts0.google.com✖

mts1.google.com✖

mw1.google.com✖

mw2.google.com✖

news.google.com✖

picasaweb.google.com✖

play.google.com✖

plus.google.com✖

sites.google.com✖

smartlock.google.com✖

spreadsheets.google.com✖

talkgadget.google.com✖

translate.google.com✖

trends.google.com✖

video.google.com✖

www.google.com✖

partner.googleadservices.com✖

www.googleadservices.com✖

pagead2.googlesyndication.com✖

www.googletagmanager.com✖

www.googletagservices.com✖

googleusercontent.com✖

feedback.googleusercontent.com✖

imasdk.googleapis.com✖

khms1.googleapis.com✖

maps.googleapis.com✖

storage.googleapis.com✖

cbslocal-uploads.storage.googleapis.com✖

[BigEasy]

hi bigeasy...if you follow all the links in articles, you will see that firefox acknowledges that it is a browser bug causing the problem and not the OSs involved...they have added it to their firefox bug tracking platform...DAMIEN

Yes i know. Every JS, written by stupid monkeys, can hang Linux and not only. Congradulation!
Well. Let me say once again: hanging OS is not a browser bug. Browser bug is multiply downloads allowed at same time. If they will fix that own bug then OS never became more stable because of that. Remember: Firefox is not part of OS, it is just application.
Furtunatly, LM doesn't actually hangs and still allowing to kill process after big delay.

[carum carvi]

DuckDuckGo was my favorite browser untill very recently they started showing only a limited amount of search answers. Suddenly a donate menu has popped up at the bottom of the list and I can't scroll beneath it further down. A few days I could. But now it is disabled. I cant scroll down below the first 20 search results. Something must be wrong.

Tried disabling two of my add ons, but that didnt matter. I use the latest version of Firefox, every update installed. Do more DuckDuckGo users experience this problem that they only can see about 20 search results?

[BG405]

I cant scroll down below the first 20 search results.

They seem to have added extra options; on the DuckDuckGo search page, open Settings > More Options and enable Auto Load (about half way down the list IIRC).

[KBD47]

I like DDG and probably 80% of the time it is fine, but at other times it is terrible beyond belief while Google is exactly on target. For instance, recently I did a search on DDG for when the first frost in my area occurs, the average date it. Startpage/Google knew exactly what I meant, DDG was completely confused and threw a broad range of differing results, the top results people named "Frost" in my area. I wish DDG had a more intuitive algorithm.

[carum carvi]

I have found the culprit. DDG from now on requires that I enable cookies, otherwise I can't scroll for more results, unless I have to manually adjust the settings for every single search, which is not practical at all ofcourse.

The settings option to scroll down automatically in DDG is only saved and remembered by my Firefox browser when I enable cookies. But I dont want cookies enabled in my firefox browser. Another forum member hadnt noticed any difficulties at all with an english language DDG edition, even with all cookies blocked. My DDG version is in another language. Maybe that causes a bug? I dont wanna imply anything is wrong with DDG generally, but it just doesnt work for me anymore in my Firefox 62.0 edition with another language.

I will switch to another search engine. I will start using https://www.etools.ch/ from now on. Swiss perfection. But not that perfect, because it has one flaw that one cant search for images or videos directly. Only weblinks to images are shown. I'll use startpage for images as an alternative.

[carum carvi]

To my surprise I have found out that my DuckDuckGo scrolling problem, was indeed a bug, which has been corrected since today. Now I CAN see a button that displays the text "More Results". Before I could not.

But I have started to like https://www.etools.ch/ that much, that I will stick with it for now, because it just delivers better results than DDG. And etools.ch is just as good as Startpage (Google). Etools.ch therefore has become my new perfect swiss metasearch engine. Only flaw is that it doesnt search for images or videos directly, only via weblinks. I can live with that.

DuckDuckGo promotes their privacy standards as the number one selling point, but etools.ch is just as privacy minded, only doesnt make a big fuss about it.

[Netherprovinc3]

Regarding Startpage, my understanding is that Startpage servers contact Google servers to get the search results. If the search was uncommon/ rare, Google can tell it's you, based on the timing, once you start visiting the sites listed in the search results, if they have some of their content on the web pages that are part of the search results (like ads). IP address.
Am I right?