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The privacy-oriented search engine Findx has shut down: https://privacore.github.io/
The reasons cited are:
- While people are starting to understand the importance of privacy it is a major hurdle to get them to select a different search engine.
- Search engines eat resources like crazy, so operating costs are non-negligible.
- Some sites (including e.g. github) use a whitelist in robots.txt, blocking new crawlers.
- The amount of spam, link-farms, referrer-linking, etc. is beyond your worst nightmare.
- Returning good results takes a long time to fine-tune.
- Monetizing is nearly impossible because advertising networks want to know everything about the users, going against privacy concerns.
- Buying search results from other search engines is impossible until you have least x million searches/month. Getting x million searches/month is impossible unless you buy search results from other search engines (or sink a lot of cash into making it yourself).
So what do you soylentils think can be done to increase privacy for ordinary users, search-engine-wise ?
Dislaimer: I worked at Findx.
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innovate, v.:
To annoy people.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 21 2018, @04:49PM (11 children)
First, sorry about the loss of your job and hope you'll find something soon (if you are out of work...)
But like someone else above, I'd never heard of findx either. DuckDuckGo is the privacy-protecting search engine that was my go-to. What did findx do that DDG didn't? Even then I end up using Google a lot because DDG doesn't find what I'm looking for and the Goog does. When deadlines are bearing down and search is essential I'm afraid I wimp out on privacy for the sake of Getting It Done.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 21 2018, @04:58PM
This is the candid response you wish you had had BEFORE starting on Findx rather than survey data or hunches that people are concerned with privacy... So there must be a business supportable market for it. Well people are concerned but Not enough to sacrifice results.
(Score: 4, Informative) by isj on Wednesday November 21 2018, @06:53PM (8 children)
- Findx had its own index. DDG doesn't. So DDG is at the mercy of Bing/Yandex. Also, as far as I known DDG doesn't do its own ranking (I could be wrong) so that ranking (or worst case: bias) is out of their control.
- Findx was based in Europe. DDG is in the US.
- Findx had a more nuanced approach to multiple languages than any other search engine (copy of my blog post: http://i1.dk/privacore_findx_blog/2018-07-05-lanuage-support-in-findx/) [i1.dk]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 21 2018, @08:05PM (6 children)
That more nuanced approach to language? Does that translate to a more nuanced approach to non-Cyrillic languages? I'm sure that most of us, over the years, have noticed that Opera browser isn't very popular in western nations - but Opera is the browser of choice among people who use the Cyrillic alphabet. For search engines, those folk have Yandex, of course. No, I'm not being a smart alec here, I'm just wondering what you focused on, and maybe what you failed to focus on.
As for your question about Soylentil's solutions: DDG is my most used search these days. I'll use Yandex sometimes, and if I've failed to get relevant hits, I'll sometimes go to Google. I refuse to use Bing under any circumstances, and my opinion of Yahoo is almost as dismal.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 21 2018, @08:29PM (1 child)
Suspicions intensify
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 21 2018, @08:36PM
Fine. Why don't you define those suspicions, categorize them, and spell them out for us. Meanwhile, I think I have some paint drying that needs to be watched.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Informative) by isj on Wednesday November 21 2018, @11:12PM
Findx focused on languages used in the West/Central Europe + English, using latin-derived scripts. And Greek.
We didn't have the resources to crawl/index/verify other scripts or languages.
(Score: 2) by legont on Thursday November 22 2018, @01:24AM (2 children)
I do use Yandex often not only because it is somewhat better than Google, which it is, but simply because I care much less about Putin sorting my dirty laundry than, you know, locals.
However, it is the first time I've heard that Opera is popular in Cyrillic world. How come?
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday November 22 2018, @05:28AM (1 child)
I have only noted the fact of Opera's popularity in a specific region. I am a poor monolingual American, so I have zero ideas why those people like Opera over anything. I can only look on, and listen while others discuss the reasons. And, if the reasons were stated for me, clearly and succinctly, I probably still wouldn't understand.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by legont on Thursday November 22 2018, @08:50PM
I did a little asking around. Yes, to my surprise, Opera was popular among "privacy conscious" folks of somewhat eastern origins. The most popular feature was built in free vpn. However, it was sold in 2016 to Chinese, who removed the feature so "sophisticated" users left.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by isj on Wednesday November 21 2018, @11:15PM
Above link should have been without the closing parenthesis: http://i1.dk/privacore_findx_blog/2018-07-05-lanuage-support-in-findx/ [i1.dk]
(Score: 3, Touché) by toddestan on Thursday November 22 2018, @06:27PM
I guess I'm the opposite. I don't have time sift though page after page after page of bullshit irrelevant search results that Google gives me. If Duckduckgo didn't find it, it won't be in the pile of garbage that I'll get from typing the same query into Google.