First of all, it’s not pointless – every little bit helps.

I really want to emphasize this. People are having an “all or nothing” attitude about this when there really isn’t a point to doing that.

If we can replace even 30-40-50% of the software we use daily with European alternatives, it’s already a massive win. The huge difference then adds up at scale. Its millions extra that will enter the EU economy at the end of the fiscal year.

Can’t wait for Trump’s speech about how he single handedly united Europe:

“Nobody unites europeans better than me, believe me. When I’m done with my presidency they will be so united they will be tired of it. Yeah, they will be tired of how united they are. This will be the most united union this country has ever seen. Not like Biden, who claims he has a handicap of 6. Can you believe that? Biden, a handicap of 6. He’s so senile he believes he’s a better golfer than me. Anyways, that Hunter Biden laptop…”

Is that real, or a misinterpretation of the law?

Yeah, in the end I managed to make it work. Quite cool. I wanted to set it up in such a way that all EU SEs get a tick every time I search for something but sadly it seems Startpage is giving me issues.

Seriously. I’d be ashamed of being a Trump supporter and show my face in public. So embarrassing.

And even more so now that it’s pretty clear that he’s barely sentient and Musk is the actual poorly hidden shadow president.

All excellent recommendations too. Hats off to Proton!

searxng which is a decentralized search engine similar to the fediverse, it lets you customize search providers and i have it set to show ddg, presearch, qwant, and startpage

How do you set it up like so? I couldn’t find such settings.

Anyways, Consider whether using that is the best thing we can be doing for the EU… Using anonymous search engines instead of a local one that will at least profit some and pay taxes here.

Its not just you lol. Its not very well written.

Should be illegal.

I’m not going to engage with that bait.

I understand your view. It’s just, I don’t see what other choice they have/had.

Search engine backends are remarkably scarce, and very expensive to run. And if you’re trying to build a front-end search engine today, you’re pretty much limited to:

• Google (US)
• Bing (US)
• Baidu (China)
• Sogou (China)
• Mojeek (UK)
• Yandex (Russia)

Between these choices, and before the US decided to become a fascist state, realistically which of these engines made more sense to pick? Being honest. US tech has always been seen as trustworthy and the golden standard for all things tech, until very recently.

Sure, they could also use metasearch engines, but those are remarkably consumer-UNfriendly and would require tweaking beyond the capabilities of the common tech company.

The only thing I cannot explain here is why they didn’t use Mojeek as their backend, and here we can only speculate…

Maybe it would have made Ecosia financially inviable if they had to pay for their API. Maybe they were concerned Mojeek’s finances were too uninspiring compared to the colossal capacities that Google/Microsoft have.

Or maybe they thought people didn’t want to have a radically different experience in results from what they are used to, and so decided to basically just give these two platforms a green makeover and promise to plant some trees. I don’t know.

My point is, I wouldn’t necessarily hold it against them. If anything, I am glad they agreed to join forces with Qwant in building a true EU-based search engine. Its sad that it took us so long to realise we need the basic infrastructure that other big economies have, but I suppose better late than ever.

I’m optimistic.

Yeah. Basically all the email settings have been automatically set by my email provider. I think it might be a matter time before it fixes itself… I hope 😬

Same. I had no idea we were this developed, but man. Europe is doing great things. Even the most beginner-friendly Linux distributions are European based.

Can’t wait to close all doors on US services and products.

Does it work well? I just bought a domain and am struggling to receive email. But maybe they are still moving settings around.

It’s a Russian shell company.

I always think it’s just a shell for some Russian company

Oh boy do I have some news for yooooooou.

Seriously, just use Mullvad DNS. Free and Swedish (also very trustworthy brand).

Not exactly misleading since they do donate money to plant trees, that’s the only claim they make.

Yes, they use Google/Bing frontend, but they have also shown interest in changing by teaming up with Qwant to build an EU-based indexer.

I don’t use Ecosia BTW, I use Qwant, but I’m trying to be fair here.

There’s an annoying meme that Europe doesn’t do tech things and it’s infuriating. The world would be a very different place were it not for companies like Raspberry pi, ARM, Arduino and Prusa.

Believe me, I was guilty of this. I think the US propaganda as the best tech creators ever is strong (or maybe ours is too weak/nonexistent).

This trade war started by Cheeto President has been a wake up call on many levels, this being one of them.

So far I’ve managed to get rid of pretty much all US tech (including adopting Linux and a mostly deGoogled phone). Better late than never.

It really wasn’t.

You tried to make it about the US when the topic is about a company that operates internationally, that’s what.

Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised is breaking national law in many countries with their one-size-fits-all approach.

But I’d rather just not give a crap about that and just keep pirating my books.

Qwant is great. Very relevant results and not a lot of ads (if any), also private-focused and looks modern.

I tried Ecosia but it wasn’t my style (a bit clunky) although their mission is absolutely respectable and worthwhile.

Qwant is is now my main search engine.