Many “alternative” search engines are better for privacy, but they are still vulnerable to censorship, because they rely on g**gle and m*crosoft’s indices for their search results. This isn’t a deep-hidden secret either, many of them disclose what search index they use on the “about” page, for example:
- https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/
- https://support.startpage.com/hc/en-us/articles/5138782571796-Why-isn-t-a-particular-site-appearing-in-the-results
- https://www.ecosia.org/privacy
There are still search engines that (claim to) maintain their own index. Most surprisingly, br*ve:
Bin-go: https://www.searchenginemap.com/ same with many others
Unfortunately, this map isn’t accurate anymore. For example it says that Startpage only uses Google search results but that’s outdated. Now Startpage uses Bing and Google search results. https://www.startpage.com/privacy-please/startpage-articles/enhanced-search-results-on-startpage ‘In working with Microsoft, Startpage is now incorporating Microsoft Bing search results and ads within some results pages, using a custom-built private search solution. Google search results will continue to broadly be used, but incorporating additional high-quality sources will have ongoing returns for our users’