For the people who have not yet decided on a search engine. The most EU way you can go is Ecosia or Qwant as they are building their own search index.
Ecosia is my personal pick as its also aimed at planting trees and they have quite a good browser alongside it.
Search engines are dying, I doubt they’ll have much relevance in ten years or so, unless something radically changes. Walled gardens, SEO, AI spam, and so on.
I wonder where the solution lies. The way the modern internet works is completely hostile to the idea of crawler-based search engines, so I feel like the focus should be on creating an alternative, people-first internet which is completely hostile to brands, corporations and advertisers, ran by communities and individuals, etc.
Far from it, if you’re willing to pay for good search check out Kagi. You don’t realize how busted search is until you see what it’s like when ads aren’t the business model.
I’ve been a paying subscriber to Kagi since 2023. Everything I wrote in my previous comment is still true. I’m glad that it works for you, though.
How would it be paid for? Subscription?
It already exists, it’s called kagi
Its US based tho, so not in the spirit of this community