Okay.

Now that we already know we are pretty much at the hands of one pupeteer, what options are there?

I already read about Kagi (apologies if mispelled) but I like to write as a hobby and 300 searches per month go fast.

What other options are there?

Edit:

For those who may be arriving now:

• Kagi seems to be a good option for an alternative search engine; it is a paid service, for which I don’t have the €€€ right now. Many speak very well about it.
• SearXNG is a thing as well, to my understanding a decentralized search system. Worth the try, in my opinion. If it’s something that is decentralized, it is worthy to support and divulge.
• There is mojeek.com, supposedly not very good but any option that goes against the monopoly is worth the try! I’m going to try this one.
• Brave.com is an option but is a bit shady.
• You should try Ecosia if you want to support reforestation efforts. Read somewhere in the thread it is part of the Bing ecosystem.
• Yep is a thing as well. Somewhere in the thread, a lemmy points they use the search results for AI trainning. So… That is that.
• And it seems there is a search engine by the name of dogpile.com.
• Startpage is another search engine (portal?) suggested by another user. I’ve used it before and like it. Read somewhere it somehow piped a standard google search but removed tracking and ads.
• and I just remembered Presearch.com. This is a really shady one (crypto warning!) that I suspect is a fork/collab with Brave Browser. I’ve used it, they have reward-per-search reward system (or had) where they give you crypto for every search. Good results, some that don’t come up neither on DDG nor Google.

p.p.s Should I start categorizing these from “shady” to “worthy”?

p.p.s 2 Does anyone remember StumbleUpon? I know it was never a search engine to begin with but it was the best source of good internet content I ever got acquainted to.

Can we get something like that back?

It looks like Bing is down, and all Bing-backed search engines are too.

https://downdetector.com/status/duckduckgo/

https://downdetector.com/status/bing/

I’m kind of surprised that the Bing guys don’t seem to have a system status page (that I could find) and haven’t managed to have any kind of status message put on their main page.

EDIT: This appears to be their official Twitter account, which is also silent on the matter as of this writing. If they’re unable to update their website, they might put something there as a way to get information out.

https://x.com/bing/

EDIT2: This is apparently their blog. Nothing there either as of this writing, but again, might try checking there, as it’s another route they might use to get information out if they cannot do so via their main page.

https://blogs.bing.com/

EDIT3: Yahoo Search appears to be working just fine, though my understanding is that they are backed by Bing.

https://search.yahoo.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search

On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would henceforth power Yahoo! Search, putting an end to Yahoo!'s in-house crawler.[2] For four years between 2015 until the end of 2018, it was powered by Google,[3] before returning to Microsoft Bing again.

DuckDuckWent

Just post your searches and questions here and we’ll try to figure it out.