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this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2026
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It really sucks that to escape Google, the second in line that is "more private" is DDG and based in the US. So that means they have to abide to the american privacy invading "patriot" laws etc.
I wish we had a good European alternative that doesn't have to comply to the NSA when they want direct access to logs while giving you a gag order...
And I know searx-ng but last time I tried it wasn't good enough imo.
Qwant is French. Not a privacy search engine and looks like it features AI now. Kagi is really good, but US based and expensive. I think most of Europe does intelligence sharing with the US ("14 eyes" or something like that)?
Yeah I used Qwant for 2/3 years. It wasn't really good either. I was constantly calling google through Qwant so it became pointless.
I think Switzerland would probably be a good place to host a search engine.
why are you thinking switzerland?
If I recall correctly they have strong privacy laws and the fact that they are not part of the EU can also help with some extra sovereignty I guess.
It's also where protonmail is hosted.
Proton are building a walled garden though. Trying to export and migrate from it is hell. I much rather have common imap/smtp and setting up pgp keys myself. That way I can easily import my local backup to a new provider if the need rises.
Proton is using that as a marketing gimmick. Swiss banking secrecy laws have absolutely nothing to do with user privacy outside of that.
Proton has complied with and handed over user data on multiple occasions.
Yes there is encryption and they can't see things, but they will hand over what metadata (IP address, device info, recovery email, payment data) they have whenever a Swiss court compels them too.
There is ecosia, although they also use the US indexes
French Qwant and German Ecosia are building a EU based index together, but it will probably take time to be competitive compared to Google. https://www.eu-searchperspective.com/