I've noticed lately my search results are a lot more mainstream bullshit than what I'm used to seeing. I have to dig multiple pages deep to find sources I'm looking for when just a year ago they'd be on the first page front and center. Also while driving to work this morning I heard a commercial on the radio for DuckDuckGo, twice. A commercial for DuckDuckGo on a popular radio station in my area is super sketchy considering the only other commercials they play these days are "GeT vAcCiNaTeD" propaganda sponsored by Pfizer/Biontech.
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I left DDG for Qwant.
Qwant tells me, "Unfortunately we are not yet available in your country." That's lame. How is it that it's only meant to work in the USA? I'd like to use it, but I'd need a VPN just to do so. Ridonk.
Qwant is based out of France, so not sure what you mean about how it's only meant to work in the USA.
It's possible your country is blocked due to sanctions or what not? Hard to say without knowing your country.
France? I just assumed it was from the USA. I live in Japan, which seems to get along with most everyone. Beats me.
Did some digging and found this Tweet-
Some of you have reported difficulties using Qwant in several countries around the world. It is a difficult decision but we have decided to close access to our services in certain countries where we don’t believe to provide the expected quality of service. Our apologies for this.
5:04 AM · Dec 16, 2020·Twitter for iPhone
https://twitter.com/QwantCom/status/1339149434572206080
Apparently, they are blocking countries that don't speak French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Portuguese, Catalan, Corsican, Breton or Basque according to a French website I found. This is a rough translation but doesn't really explain WHY it's blocking them.
https://www.numerama.com/tech/676925-qwant-ferme-lacces-a-son-moteur-de-recherche-dans-certains-pays.html
This could be due to fees they pay MIcrosoft/Bing to provide results to search terms when Qwant can't produce meaningful results from its own databases. The costs paid may not make business sense because they're not harvesting data like Google to compensate for the expenses.
When I tried qwant before it seemed like it didn't work well for English searches. That was probably a year ago though
Well, if Micro$oft say so...