Firefox

doesn't duckduckgo do the same thing at this point with tracker links? it also uses bing

I would use SearxNG instead, using a public instance like searx.be. It is really lightweight, gets results from multiple indexes and is very privacy-friendly.

I'm sorry but that is not correct. In the link that you shared to their privacy statement it is explicitly stated that they do not collect your identity when using the service. They say that your identity " is the information we use to ensure that you are who you say you are when you make a de-listing request, report or create an account. This includes: first name, last name, email address."

Furthermore, unlike duckduckgo which to my knowledge relies entirely on Bing's search index, Qwant does actually index the web itself and only uses the Bing index when a search returns insufficient hits from their own index. When they query the microsoft index they send the following data along: "Search keywords; Information about the browser you are using (the User Agent); The first three bytes of your IP address; The approximate geographic area at the origin of the search, at the scale of a region or city; The salty hash generated from your IP address, your User Agent and a salt changing no later than every 3 months; A random token generated by Qwant (aiming to limit data cross-checking)."

I do not know much about DuckDuckGo, but from an initial read the privacy policy is much more vague than Qwant's, not mentioning any specific information that is shared. As they are a US company, they are also not covered by the general data protection regulation.

In general, both search engines seem to do a good job at protecting users' privacy, which to me sounds like something that should be encouraged, not polluted with misinformation.

what are you making misleading claims about Qwant for??? if you click your own damn link you’ll see that the only case where they need to collect your name is if you make an account (completely unnecessary), make a de-listing request (to verify that you are who you say you are before removing something, otherwise i could just go and have jeff bezos removed), or if you report something.

also, 80% of your bullet points after “user agent” are redundant because they are literally just what makes up a user agent. newsflash: every single website you ever visit in your life collects your user agent because it needs to know whether to give you the mobile or the desktop version of the site. this has nothing to do with privacy in this case, you’re just slandering to slander

Thank you for informing us. This is what I wanted to know.

Reading through the current Qwant privacy policy certainly doesn't alleviate any privacy concerns either....

Mozilla keeps building/buying, then abandoning things. I'm not sure if they're cut out for that project, and in my experience a SearX instance's effectiveness is mostly based on whether there are enough users for the data to be obfuscated, but so few that it doesn't get rate limited...

how is this better or different than DDG?

Qwant is using its own index ~~plus Bing~~. If I remember DDG only using Bing's index and DDG started to censored results in 2022.

Sometimes better search results than DDG (but about the same), EU based (France), offers a Openstreetmap based alternative to google maps (opposed to ddg using Apple Maps) and a slightly worse privacy policy are the main differences

what is the nature of the “partnership”

The partnership is entirely of monetary nature. Like all "partnerships" Mozilla has with 3rd parties that are integrated into Firefox.

That is their business concept. Those companies pay high amounts of money, and Mozilla adds their links into the browser or sends them "anonymized" usage statistics for advertisement purposes.

Searxng and you live happily

I didn't see a line that suggests they're putting Qwant as default, only that they're making it available as a search provider, just as DuckDuckGo and others are.

They say:

Did you know you could choose the search engine of your choice right from your Firefox URL bar?

I had used it for a while in the past. The results were surprisingly good. I have moved to other search engines to experiment since then, but I have nothing bad to say about my time with Qwant.

I've used it a long time now. I find it to have much more relevant results than DDG did last time I tried.

I would love to but it's still unavailable in my country :/

Isn't Duckduckgo?

Doesn’t Mozilla rely on Google for default search?

and money...mainly the money.

Does this change that relationship?

Unknown at this time.

Yeah... Things like this partnership, plus publishing posts against things Google is doing (https://blog.mozilla.org/en/privacy-security/googles-protected-audience-protects-advertisers/), might spook Google a bit. Mozilla rely on receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from Google every year. Don't bite the hand that feeds you.