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Qwant, a European search engine that respects your privacy

about.qwant.com

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Re: Qwant, a European search engine that respects your privacy

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was possible to close and turn off the news panels and it is possible to see only web results (by clicking on the left panel). This choice is unfortunately not remembered.

The downside of being "cookie free" - instant forgetting of your preferences.

Not really - it seems that you can set your settings and get url that remembers them.

"If you haven't created a Qwant account to save your settings, you can use the following link as a homepage or drag it into your bookmarks: https://www.qwant.com/?l=en&h=0&hc=1&a=1&s=1&b=1&i=1&r=US&sr...

Re: Qwant, a European search engine that respects your privacy

#22
post #11

That's nice but it needs better support for indexing JavaScript single page apps. Right now only Google seems to be doing it properly.

That sounds like a feature, punishing poorly made "apps" that require javascript.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted, I'd use the shit out of a search engine that was optimized for sites that don't use javascript for basic functionality.

Re: Qwant, a European search engine that respects your privacy

#23
I'm really liking it so far. I was able to find some obscure stuff that google failed me on with image search, using rather ridiculous queries. A few random searches also returned more relevant results on the first page. Will definitely keep using it for a while to see if this keeps up.

Re: Qwant, a European search engine that respects your privacy

#24

60 requests, Loaded in 6.49s. Cripes, if you don't have some marketing department shoving tracking scripts all over the place against your will what's your excuse?

I got a question from our marketing department why it takes a while for our website to load just the other day. My answer was exactly what you mentioned - forcing us to include tracking scripts from google analytics, tag manager, oracle maximizer, segment, facebook, doubleclick and a handful of other monstrosities that do god only knows what on startup.

Prediction: no change will take place because someone else will say 'without that data, we're flying blind.'

Re: Qwant, a European search engine that respects your privacy

#25
It's OK, reasonably fast, and I do like the interface, but search results as a list is so 1990s. Give me the result as a DAG. Give me sort options. Let me pin a result and then iterate in relation to it.

Show me something different, not the same thing as everyone else with a promise about my privacy and some different graphical sugar. To beat the established competitors you don't need to be incrementally better, you need to be qualitatively different.

I do prefer it DDG, at least for desktop use, because it's actually using the whole of my screen for a change. But wow me with something. I haven't had that in a while.

Re: Qwant, a European search engine that respects your privacy

#26

60 requests, Loaded in 6.49s. Cripes, if you don't have some marketing department shoving tracking scripts all over the place against your will what's your excuse?

Definitely a problem. I had 10.24s on first load, which is about 9 seconds longer after google/duckduckgo becomes usable.

Re: Qwant, a European search engine that respects your privacy

#27

I'm not seeing any advantage over duckduckgo.com. I want a search engine that loads quickly and gives good results, DDG does that while protecting my privacy.

Do you remember DDG five years ago? Everyone needs to start somewhere.

One potential advantage is it's run out of Europe instead of the US, which is significant for certain people.

Re: Qwant, a European search engine that respects your privacy

#28
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downside of being "cookie free" - instant forgetting of your preferences.

Not really - it seems that you can set your settings and get url that remembers them. "If you haven't created a Qwant account to save your settings, you can use the following link as a homepage or drag it into your bookmarks: https://www.qwant.com/?l=en&h=0&hc=1&a=1&s=1&b=1&i=1&r=US&sr...

Well that's nice and all, but how is a typical user supposed to find and understand that? (Also drag it into your bookmarks? I don't know a single user who will understand that that's a thing.)

Re: Qwant, a European search engine that respects your privacy

#29
post #19
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm now close to convinced but the domain is .com - fair enough for world use but this sells itself as an EU based affair. Be who you are (says the MD of a UK company with a .net email address!) I genuinely hope this works as advertised but I am having a bloody hard time finding out what is behind the scenes from the about website. I will stick with it because their advertised basic premise strikes a note with me.

I simply fired up Firefox and searched (probably via G) for "quanta" and got a pretty severe Google notice. Now I know what I am going to do. Bye Google - I was a customer for around 20 years. I'm off.

What exactly do you mean by "a pretty severe Google notice"?
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