
Show HN: Self-hosted, ad-free, privacy-respecting alternative to Google search - vinushkah
https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search
======
huhtenberg
The crucial part is missing in the Readme - _how it works._

Nothing else matters until this bit is explained.

From the looks of it, it's just a proxy that forwards search requests to
Google. Unless these happen to go out via Tor or similar anonymizer tech,
that's hardly a "privacy-respective alternative to Google search".

~~~
tyingq
It does appear to strip cookies, and either some or all of Google's JS,
depending the config. So, Google wouldn't see your client IP, any cookies,
etc. Perhaps not fully private, but they do seem to provide better privacy.

~~~
rovr138
> So, Google wouldn’t see your client IP

Yes they would. You can’t sent them a request without giving them your IP.

\- If you’re self hosting it on your device, they have that device’s current
public IP \- If you’re self hosting at a server you have, you’re giving them
that (and will be easier to track).

~~~
tyingq
_" Yes they would. You can’t sent them a request without giving them your
IP."_

I suspect you know what I meant. They can't see the IP of your browser.
Rather, they see a Heroku, DO, whatever IP.

~~~
rovr138
I actually tried it on my laptop.

That’s why I pointed out the 2 cases.

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montroser
For a fully independent alternative, see
[https://private.sh](https://private.sh) which is uses
[https://gigablast.com](https://gigablast.com) as a data source.

Gigablast itself is an open source crawler, index, and query engine. It is a
bit of a quirky one-man project, but also kind of good.

~~~
vinushkah
Since I found out that private.sh was owned by PrivateInternetAccess, I've
been hesitant to use it given their recent acquisition by Kape Technologies.

~~~
rasengan
The code for Private.sh is open source so you can actually see what it’s doing
instead of trusting it.

Don’t trust, verify :)

~~~
livre
You can never be sure that the code you see is the same as the code that
powers that website. If you trust the code the best you can do is run your own
server.

~~~
rasengan
If you click View Source you can see that queries are absolutely encrypted.
Running your own server just changes your IP but it’s still “yours.”

Finally, you shouldn’t “trust” code and run it. You absolutely need to read
and understand first and finally, determine if running yourself actually
brings benefit.

~~~
livre
You can't trust code you don't understand, if you do that don't call it trust,
call it faith. Your query has to get decrypted somewhere or else the server
wouldn't be able to proxy the request to Google unless it is E2E encrypted but
then it is no different than just using a VPN or a socks5 proxy. If that's the
case better just use Tor or a VPN and have privacy everywhere instead of just
on your search page.

------
moepstar
Just to add some perspective - i'm using DDG exclusively because i'm really
wary sending G _any_ kind of traffic at all, since that will be tracked
anyways.

Same goes for facebook - as long as you're logged in, you're sending them
beacons for every site you visit that has a Like-button somewhere :S

~~~
lozf
> Same goes for facebook - as long as you're logged in...

Even if you're __not __logged in, AIUI they 're still logging the IP's that
load those like buttons, and anything else they can glean to match to "shadow
profiles", which presumably they try to match with known profiles via cookies
etc. if/when you log in later.

~~~
nsomaru
Use privacy badger

------
patchtopic
my first thought was "if it's self hosted, don't I have to index the entire
internet first before I use it..?"

.. before I read it's actually a frontend/proxy to google, not a separate
thing. This is fine, but the seems a bit misleading to me.

------
thih9
I like the idea, I think we need more projects like this.

Minor nitpicking re: title, I don’t view it as an alternative to google
search, since it still relies on google search results.

~~~
pedrogpimenta
I don't think it's either minor nor nitpicking. It's not an alternative at
all. If Google doesn't exist, this doesn't exist.

That said, I like the effort and it makes sense. It just shouldn't be called
an alternative.

~~~
curiousgal
It wasn't called an alternative, you're criticizing the title of the HN post
which has nothing to do with the project.

Edit: Never mind I missed the upper project description.

~~~
andreareina
The project description is "Self-hosted, ad-free, privacy-respecting
alternative to Google search", same as the title.

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brnt
Lately I've been using searx, which I found out depends in quality greatly on
the instance used. Searx.space has a list of instances you can use, and you
should try another if one doesn't perform well for you.

~~~
unicornporn
I've tried plenty of instances in the past and they've all been defunct. May I
ask which one you recommend?

~~~
brnt
Stinpriza.org works well for me. Tried searx.be and that one didn't give me
good results.

~~~
unicornporn
Thanks!

------
obilgic
Title is completely misleading

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t0astbread
Why is this flagged? Maybe it's something HN doesn't find very useful, okay,
but that's not a reason to flag it.

~~~
detaro
reading the comments, probably because it is not what the title promises.

~~~
generalpass
> reading the comments, probably because it is not what the title promises.

If that were the case, admins would simply change the title.

I suspect the reason is that it's a tool that is designed to violate a
specific site's TOS, which I think this tool does.

~~~
detaro
That admins could change the title doesn't mean users don't feel mislead and
flag in the mean time.

~~~
generalpass
I have observed that when I flag a title it is not publicly indicated to be
flagged.

~~~
detaro
It's not a binary. There's a threshold of flags after which it is shown and a
higher one after which it gets killed, scaled by other activity on the
submission (and possibly some other internal factors, the details aren't
really documented).

------
badrabbit
Perhaps a common protocol to query index search items would help with all
this. New search engines pop up but how can they realistically stand a chance
unless they depend om bing or google at least in the back end,even if they can
they simply can't out spend or out hire google

------
baxtr
I have been using the Russian search engine yandex.ru lately. You will get
different results. It reminds me of the google of previous times with less
"SEO optimized" content on-top.

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butz
I wonder what server one would need to actually self-host web search engine.
And how long it would take for initial indexing?

~~~
t0astbread
And how much energy it'd take if everyone did that...

Addendum: Maybe something like what package managers are doing would be
feasible? Download an index that's as compact as possible and search locally.
Does that exist already?

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generalpass
This seems like something Google doesn't like, as in, they'll stop serving you
results.

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foxhop
It's like a search engine proxy? I'm assuming flask?

