FULL VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
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after years of testing several private
search engines i’ve settled on my
favorite that is now the default on all
of my browsers my journey starts back in
2018 when i was using duckduckgo it was
the most accessible and simple privacy
search engine and i especially loved
their bangs which allow you to
conveniently send your search to
countless sites but i never loved the
results as i’m not a fan of bing which
is pretty much exclusively what
duckduckgoey uses this is a good time to
mention that some people love duckduckgo
results which makes me outline the
disclaimer for this video this is my
journey with my opinions i promise i’ll
be asking about your journeys later in
the video since i didn’t like
duckduckgo’s results i found myself
using the bangs pretty much by default
before even attempting to see what
duckduckgo would give me duckduckgo was
working against me and not with me and
this is when i knew something needed to
change so i moved over to startpage a
search engine that privately proxies
google results this transition happened
around the time start page was partially
acquired by system one which i didn’t
find a big deal since nothing changed
about their privacy policy nor how they
conducted themselves internally in my
opinion they did an okay job of clearing
up people’s concerns and i even got to
sit down with their ceo to talk about
those concerns where i left feeling
pretty good about everything you can
watch that interview yourself
since start page proxies google results
i was getting the results i wanted in a
more private manner and because of this
i was much happier with start page than
duckduckgo full disclosure because it’s
important for me to mention this after
the ceo interview they offered me a
summer internship where i helped them
with some how-to videos which i covered
in an announcement but they’re not aware
of making this video and these are my
thoughts and i hope they don’t get mad
but frankly that’s too bad because it’s
our channel where i’m allowed to speak
up now i loved using start page here’s
the problem i couldn’t use it anymore
since they started getting stricter with
blacklisting ip addresses tied to vpn
and
tor users so i couldn’t even use the
service as someone who uses a vpn or
tour almost every day it puts me in a
position where i had to choose between
private searches or privacy from my isp
and i wasn’t willing to make that
compromise when there were so many
search engines available to me so
yeah i hopped over to an instance of
search that met a search engine where
you customize the results yourself it’s
extremely powerful and is the only open
source and self-hostable option i tried
it was just too much for me i was
spending more time configuring the
search engine to work well than actually
doing quality searches and this is
another example of a tool that just
wasn’t working for me but against me so
while this is objectively probably the
most transparent and most private
provider i’m covering today i just
wasn’t interested in going that route
since i’m all about simplicity in my
privacy journey with really no more
options at the time i went back to good
now beautiful viewer i really tried to
enjoy it i would put those google bangs
then stop and convince myself to give
duckduckgo a shot for the search and you
half the times i’d end up having to use
the bang anyway because the results were
so crap i just do not like duckduckgo
results and i don’t consider myself a
bad searcher i have read books on this
stuff and have no issues with most
search engines i just don’t find the
results relevant to what i’m looking for
a lot of times the one thing just to
give them credit that i do love to this
day is any development or programming
related searches especially with their
integration with stack overflow but
that’s it and honestly it’s fantastic
and i think it’s the best search engine
for that then the dark ages i still
overall reluctantly use duckduckgo but i
didn’t enjoy using it um i tested start
page again but i couldn’t because i
couldn’t access it i tried search.me
again i tried google i tried quant i
tried moji but simply put nothing really
made me happy and made me want to use it
brave search was released offering not a
meta search engine but their own index
which is very unique and i’ll talk about
why and what that is soon it also just
so happens that duckduckgo’s reliance on
bing had become more obvious with
several big stories hitting the news
that i’m sure many of you heard of
and during that time brave search
results kept improving i can confidently
say that brave search is my new choice
for a privacy search engine for myself
and let me break down why and what my
experience has been like the last couple
months first privacy wise it lines up
similarly to the alternatives you’re not
missing out here second i don’t find the
results as good as google but it’s only
improving they’ve added new features
that i feel is making searches better
and i do find the results better than
every other privacy search engine i
tested with the exception of start page
whose i like the best since it’s just
google third they support banks just
like duckduckgo which is like my
favorite thing about duckduckgo so
that’s a big plus fourth this is really
important so listen up brave indexes its
own results unlike meta search engines
like duckduckgo which just give you
search results from someone else i
actually really recommend visiting the
search engine map in a description to
help you see this now brave is still
using an unknown percentage of results
from other search engines as of today
but they’re slowly phasing this out as
their own index begins to improve over
the reason this is really important is
because i don’t think meta search
engines reliant on big tech companies
are the long-term solution duckduckgo
and startpage are fantastic at giving
people private results from being in
google respectively but in regards to
offering independent results brave and
mojic have the right idea of offering
their own independent index to avoid
lots of the issues that services like
duckduckgo are facing that are likely to
frankly get worse as time goes on fifth
brave search has never blacklisted me
once but neither has any search engine
here except start page so it works fine
for me in tor and with my vpn and
finally i genuinely like using brave
search i find the interface modern i
appreciate the features they give me it
feels smooth to use and it’s just a
the one thing that’s severely incomplete
for me is image search which as far as i
know and as far as my tests are showing
it’s just 100 being images like
duckduckgo which means i’m no worse off
than i was when i was using duckduckgo
but with the better experience
everywhere else a final thing i’ll
mention a lot of people are turned off
um by brave because of their crypto
stuff and i would just ask you to
consider that the search engine has
nothing to do with the browser and you
can use the search engine in any browser
that allows other search engines i like
to try to differentiate those two things
but you do you i don’t really care what
search engine you use now here’s the
it’s just a search engine i’m not
particularly married to brave search and
i don’t think anyone should be married
to a search engine it’s just a search
engine the important part about this
video is to recognize that most search
engines bring something to the table
duckduckgo offers its collection of
results with bangs startpage offers more
private google search.me offers a
transparent option for power users mojic
offers an independent index some offer
trees the list goes on and almost all
are more private than google or bing so
it’s normally a net win for most people
i just found that brave search works for
me and is only improving the more i use
it and it’s honestly the happiest i’ve
been with any search engine the last
several years on this really long and
now i promised earlier i want to hear
about your journeys so please let me
know in the comments what your
experience with different search engines
have been did you test some that i
didn’t test what do you use what are
your top three just let me know because
i’d love to hear and we want to get an
idea of what you all use and the last
thing i’ll leave you with be grateful we
have so many great search engine options
and definitely give them some love for
what they bring to the table because
each of them offers something very
thanks for watching and we’ll see you