- cross-posted to:
- privacyguides@lemmy.one
- cross-posted to:
- privacyguides@lemmy.one
Recently discovered a search engine thanks another social network (Pjuu). Appears as a premium search engine that take cares privacy. Anyone knows it? I’m trying the free version
That is because of their business model, you are the customer.
You don’t HAVE to use a real email either. vlad even says so. But it’s needed to collect payment. Otherwise they don’t track you searches, or even see them. The fees are for their operations and development.
I’m not really understanding what you wanna tell me with “you are the customer”. They display ads at the top of your search results and that’s how they make money. Considering that, yes, you are the customer. But they don’t track you and your search queries are anonymized so they respect your privacy. With an adblocker you don’t even see the ads. You can make an account to earn PRE (the crypto currency they use) with your search queries. But you don’t need to do that. You could even run your own node server(s) and earn even more because you’re helping the search engine by being a part of the infrastructure. But you can ignore all that and just use the search engine.
Anyway I’m really satisfied with the search results. Didn’t even feel the need to switch to another search engine since I’ve started using it a few months ago.
Kagi does not do that. In fact their search results give you statistics on links/returns about things like trackers etc. there aren’t ads in Kaji returns.
Sorry about that. I deleted my previous post because I thought it was an answer to another post. But you were faster with responding to it, haha. Yes, I understand their business model now. They want you to pay for a specific amount of searches. That’s how they cover the costs.
How exactly am I the customer if they don’t track me? Do they display ads? How do they cover the costs for this search engine?
You are paying them for the service and the costs to make a custom search engine. The only thing they keep track of is the number of times you queried the service. They don’t track queries or even see them. You don’t have a search history and can’t see previous searches because it’s not tracked
There are no ads. They aren’t just proxying your search like DuckDuckGo.
I see! Thanks for the clarification. I just checked their prices. Looks like you get X searches for a specific price. Not appealing to me but I bet many people are fine with that. I rather prefer a little bit of ads at the top of my search results (which I could block with an adblocker anytime) but that is just my personal preference.
If you just block their ads, then how are they funding themselves with the model you propose? Their audience is privacy minded, so much more likely to block ads.
So they still need a revenue stream, and showing-but-not-showing ads isn’t it.
I also block all ads, to be clear. But I don’t think they’d be able to make money off ads, for that reason.
The percentage of people using an adblocker is fairly small.