 So recently, I made a video talking about how I'm going to be taking my privacy a little bit more seriously this year. Specifically, I was starting to think about that after the last past breach and how maybe it's not such a good idea to trust people with my data, given the fact that I don't own those servers. Now, obviously, I can't host a huge server farm and do everything myself. So I'm going to have to become a little bit creative when I start thinking about how I want to protect my privacy and protect my data. The first thing on the list this year for this series that I'm doing is search or web search. Now traditionally, I am a Google search, I'm kind of a Google search fanboy. I don't like the fact, obviously, that they take all my data. That's horrible. But even the people who hate Google can't deny that Google is a really good search engine. Also, my Android phone is over there listening to me right now. And it's listening to me here too. That's great. Thank you, Google, for proving my point. You listen way too much. But anyways, the point is, is that I like Google search because it's really good. It does its job very, very well. You search for something you're almost guaranteed to find the result that you want, at least in the most part, right? But obviously, all of that goodness comes with a huge downside of that you can't trust them with your data. So I have to find an alternative. And today, I'm going to be talking about the four that I've narrowed it down to and the one that I've chosen. So let's go ahead and talk about the four best alternatives to Google. Let's jump in. So the first one on the list that I considered was brave search. Now, this is of the four that I'm going to be talking about. Brave is the one that I've used the least. But there's a good reason behind that. So first, I don't know whether or not you can trust the corporation behind Brave or not. Most of my feelings on this are just that they're feelings. And they all come from the fact that I don't enjoy the Brave browser at all. Like I really don't. I don't like their enthusiasm about crypto nonsense. And that's just a personal opinion on my part. Don't come at me crypto bros. I don't care about your fake money. Sorry, I shouldn't have said that. But anyways, the point is, is that I'm not sure if I can trust the corporation behind Brave. Therefore, I'm not sure if I can trust the Brave search. Now, like I said, most of that is 100% feelings on my part. I have no proof whether or not they're trustworthy or not. But that corporation has always come off a little bit shady for me. And I don't think that in my brain that I can trust them. Now, in terms of actually being a search engine, Brave is actually really good. It brings in results from multiple search engines. It does a good job of ranking them. It's really nicely designed. It's really fast. So it does a good job. So Brave is an option. If that's something you're looking for in terms of a private search engine. But it's not for me. So that's one that I looked at, but decided to not go with. The next one on the list that I considered was DuckDuckGo. Now this is the OG, the big daddy of private search engines out there. And it's been around for a very long time. And it is known for being a very private search engine. That being said, their search results are terrible. Now I'm going to guarantee that there's at least one person in my comments section right now typing, but Matt, when I use DuckDuckGo, the search engine results are just fine. And to that I say good for you. But we search for different things. And they just aren't as good as any other results on any other search engine that I'm going to show you today. They're just not. And that's disappointing. It's just, I want to like DuckDuckGo because they are a proponent of privacy and not stealing your information. And of the search engines that I'm showing you today, this is the one that's the most likely to be around in 10 years. I think that they have a sustainable way of making money and they've been around for a long time already. So I trust that they're going to be here. The problem is, is that their results are just not good enough. Every time I use them, I always end up using the bang system to go do a Google search. If I could type like so, and I just end up doing that all the time and just end up using Google anyways. And if I'm just going to use Google anyways through DuckDuckGo, I might as well just use Google. If I'm going to end up sharing my data with Google, why involve a third party in the first place? Right? So from previous experiences, DuckDuckGo just was never going to end up being the search engine that I chose just because I know from experience that the results are not good enough for me. I always end up using the Google search anyways. So that's one that I considered, but decided not to go with. The third one on the list is StartPage. Now, StartPage is an interesting search engine in that it's not actually a search engine at all, but instead is a front end for Google. All it does here is it does your searching for you and obfuscates your data so that you don't have to worry about Google stealing it. That's really all it does. So of the ones that are on this list, it has the best search results out of all of them. That being said, I don't really care for it all that much. I know it's it's it's silly, but honestly, I just don't really care for it all that much. Despite the results being really, really good. There's just something about it that I don't like. I can't even really enunciate what it's all about, why I don't care for it. Some of it is that this stuff here never goes away. Even if you add it to Firefox, you're always getting prompted to add their StartPage to your browser, even if it's already there. And stop being so pushy. OK, I don't like that. I don't like pushy in my search engine. I really don't. So that's one of the reasons, but more than that, it's just if you search for something like something really creative here. It just feels this is what I'm talking about. It just feels a little slow, right? I don't know why, but it feels slow to me like it's still loading, by the way. And that's not a great experience. Now, honestly, speed is not that big of a deal because the one that I end up going with is actually slower than this. So that's not a big factor in it. But the reason why I think it feels slower is because some of the assets load slow, right? It's not it's not like the web page itself was overly slow. It's the extra frills they had to put on here. Like, you know, this part here showed up last. And these really odd anonymous view icons showed up absolutely last. And I'm not sure why, but, you know, they did. But it's so there's something about star page that I just don't really care for all that much. I know there's a lot of fans of it out there. And it was really close to being my selection because they do a good job of search results because it's just Google search results. That's all this is, right? And I would say that I'm probably going to still keep it around, even though I don't care for it, because it does a fantastic job of images, right? Of the ones that I've showed you, this one does a fantastic job of images. DuckDuckGo does OK as well in terms of images, but I like start page just a little bit better. So if you search for images as often as I do, which I do in a ton, starts page is probably the best option. So that's one of the reasons why I'm going to keep it bookmarked so I can go there first to search for images. So that's this is the runner up. It was close, but there's still something about it that I just don't really care for all that much. So what did I go with? The one that I ended up with is called Sirks. Now, the reason why I've decided to go for Sirks is for two main reasons. One, the search is very customizable. So if you search for something like so, you can change how your search engines are ranked, how they show up and everything. You can also choose which ones that pulls from completely. So if you only want to pull from, say, some random search engine that you'd never heard of before, you can do that if that's what you want to do. Or you can search through all of them if you want. It doesn't matter. And you can, like I said, you can rank them so that they can you can search through them as you want. And it's really good. And you can do that by type so you can so you can turn on different searches for images, videos, news, all that stuff. And it's very, very customizable. There are a ton of options here. And basically what it means is that every person who has their own search gets different results based on which search engines they've chosen. It's really quite fantastic. Now, I will say this, searches by far the slowest of the four that I've shown you. And really, that's only because of where this particular server is hosted. And it really is going to depend on what instance you choose. So some instances are going to be way faster. Some of them are going to be super slow. Now, that leads me to the second reason why I've chosen this one is because it is open source and you can host it yourself. Now, I have obviously not done that yet. This is just somebody else's instance. So I'm going to be working on that in a video for February. But the fact that this is open source and you can host it yourself means that you're going to be in full control over your data. Now, obviously, that's going to open up a whole can of worms in terms of making sure your server is private and all this stuff. But that's tomorrow Matt's problem. Right now, the reason why I've chosen this is because it's open source. At a later date, I can host it myself so that I can have full control over it. But also that customizability just it really cannot be beat. There's no other search engine out there that has this many options when it comes to where it gets its data from and how it presents the results to you. Now, I will say that out of everything, the images on this one are a little bit lackluster. And the reason why I say that is because there are very few options for searching for different formats. And when I say very few, I mean none at all. Like you can't choose transparent. You can't choose anything like that. Now, it's possible that those are options are in the search engine here. It's possible that those are here. I haven't actually seen that it's possible, but I haven't seen them. So the fact that those options are here make this a less than desirable image search because I'm always looking for a transparent background on my images for the banners that I make for the channel. I don't want to have to spend my time removing backgrounds all the time. They just would be a complete waste of time for me. So the biggest downside of search is that the image search isn't all that great. Unfortunately, I should take that back. The image search is actually quite fine. It just doesn't give you options like everything else does. So for image search, I'll probably use start page for everything else. I'm using search. And like I said, in February, I'm going to be making a video on hosting it myself. One of my longtime patrons has asked me to do this like a year and a half ago. Like I'm really slow with requests. I'm sorry. I'm really bad at it. But that video is now in the is literally in my book planned for middle of February. So that will be happening then. So yeah, I went with Sirks and I am quite happy with my choice. I've used Sirks before many times and have been quite happy with it. There are still instances where I cheat a little bit and end up going to Google. Anyways, it's usually when I need an image like because the image search in Sirks is not any good, or at least in terms of, you know, options. When I know I'm going to be needing a needing an image, I usually end up cheating and going to Google. But this time I'm going to cheat and go to start page. That will eliminate the Google cheat and just kind of solve my problem. So I went with Sirks in the comment section below. If you've made this decision yourself, choosing a different alternative search engine, let me know, I'd love to hear from you. You can follow me on Massage on our Odyssey. Those links will be in the video description. You can support me on Patreon at patreon.com slash the Linux cast links for the YouTube support and Libre Pay will be in the video description as well. Thanks to everybody who does support me on Patreon and YouTube. You guys are all absolutely amazing. Without you, the challenge should not be anywhere near where it is right now. So thank you so very, very much for your support. I truly do appreciate it. You guys are all just absolutely amazing. So thank you so much. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time.