Guide | 🎲 Vivaldi Search Engines Collection 🎲

Catweazle

@stardepp, other for Odysee (Online service from IMDB), for those which want to avoid YT

https://odysee.com/$/search?q=%s

Front-ends of YT are failing more and more, it seems Google is blocking these one by one.

wintercoast

@Catweazle Thanks for that. I use Odysee, so just added.

There's also the very slick Watch on LBRY extension.

"automatically redirects you to the LBRY [Odysee] network when it detects that the video is there."

It's customisable. You can set it to run manually or automatically.

If you set it to manual then you can start watching a video on YT, click a button and then it automatically switches to the Odysee version at the correct timestamp.

Also, it lets you see whether the video is actually available on Odysee, so it serves as a discovery process as well.

Catweazle

@stardepp, one more for the collection

Neevt

https://neevt.com/search?q=%s&t=text

stardepp

@Catweazle I have added the Neevt and the Odysee search to the search engine collection.

Bild Text

wintercoast

@Catweazle I've just tried looking up Neevt and can't find any more information about it other that what's on its About page. I tried asking the Chat AIs and they either fail completely or they display results for the now-defunct Neeva! However, I corrected Bing Chat and it gave me some details but still displayed links for Neeva! So I've no idea whether Bing has hallucinated or not!

This is what Bing says:

I apologize for the confusion. I was referring to Neeva, not Neevt. Neevt is a different search engine that was launched in 2021 by a team of former Microsoft engineers. It is a free, open-source, and decentralized search engine that aims to provide users with more control and transparency over their online searches . Some of its distinguishing features are:

It does not rely on any centralized servers or databases, but instead uses a peer-to-peer network of nodes that store and share the web index .
It does not collect or store any user data, and uses end-to-end encryption to protect user privacy and security .
It allows users to customize their search preferences, such as language, region, and filters, and to contribute to the web index by crawling and indexing new websites .
It has a community-driven approach, where users can rate, review, and comment on the search results, and also report any spam or malicious websites .
It has a reward system, where users can earn tokens for using the search engine, and use them to access premium features or donate to charitable causes .

Neevt is currently available in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, and India. It is compatible with most browsers and devices, and also offers a mobile app and a browser extension. Neevt claims to be a better alternative to Google and Bing, as it respects user freedom and democracy on the web .

Source: Conversation with Bing, 12/10/2023

How did you discover Neevt? Is Bing's summary accurate?

wintercoast

@stardepp said in Guide | Vivaldi search engines collection :

@Catweazle I have added the Neevt and the Odysee search to the search engine collection.

There's also a suggest url that I've just tested

https://neevt.com/suggestions?q=%s

There's another table somewhere here that also lists suggest urls.

stardepp

@wintercoast Thank you and can be found here:

https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/16991/guide-search-suggestion-url

Catweazle

@wintercoast, it seems very new, i discover it on AlternativeTo on new released apps, Although its announcement of being the first search engine without ads, logs or tracking is naturally exaggerated, in view of others that have not done so for a long time either (Andisearch (my favorite), Whoogle, Mojeek, etc.)

wintercoast

@Catweazle I emailed Neevt pasting in Bing's answer but he seemed to misunderstand what I was asking and didn't answer me!

I also tried a follow-up question to Bing just now, asking where it got its info from?

"I got my information about Neevt from the web search results that I obtained using one of my predefined tools."

I then asked what are its predefined tools? It replied:

"I'm sorry, but I cannot tell you about my predefined tools. They are internal functions that I use to help me answer your questions and requests. They are not meant to be accessed or invoked by anyone else."

However, if it's true that it was created by former Microsoft devs that might be why Bing happens to know some details and nothing else does.

It's odd though that both Neeva and Neevt start with Neev. Neeva is by ex-Googlers. Are they both using some specific industry AI model "Neev?"

davidsundberg

Hi,

I'm glad that you've come across Neevt. We are a technology company established in 2022 from Sweden. Neevt is an advertisement-free, privacy-focused search engine. We utilize our proprietary AI models, known as AllrA-(the number varies depending on the specific AI model). Neevt has a team of former employees from Yandex and Google. We are continuously committed to improve Neevt, and we welcome any feedback you may have. Neevt was founded by myself and Artem Ivanskiov in 2022, and we do not have a background as Microsoft developers.

@wintercoast @Catweazle

Pathduck

@davidsundberg Neevt seems very promising. Clean and good looking landing and results page, fast, and giving decent results.

I also appreciate you having open APIs and especially linking directly to your suggestions API so others won't have to look it up - and of course actually using proper OpenSearch suggestions, it helps a lot

I tried looking into what backends you use, is it Bing or Google or your own crawler/index? If the latter that would of course be very impressive. If you aim to be open I suggest you write where the results are from for transparency.

And kudos to your web devs, that must be the cleanest looking source code I've seen for a search engine

One drawback is you use Ads By Google - everyone has to make money I guess, just know most adblockers including Vivaldi's built-in will just block those requests. And the tinfoil-hat brigade will immediately call you out for having "trackers" so there's that...

Oh and Safe Search should be off by default. We're all adults on the internets. The easily offended should go use Bing Chat or whatever.

stardepp

@davidsundberg I set Neevt search as my default search in Vivaldi yesterday, out of complete curiosity and collecting search engines is a hobby of mine.

davidsundberg

Hi @Pathduck, I'm glad you like Neevt. Thank you for the great feedback! We're currently working on a new 'About Us' page because the existing one is not what it's supposed to be. Our APIs will always be open and free to use. We've developed our own index, which makes us fully independent.

Neevt is entirely ad-free, we use Ads by Google on our other products. We are currently exploring alternatives to Ads by Google, and I would be more than happy if you could recommend one.

Pathduck

@davidsundberg said in Guide | Vivaldi search engines collection :

We've developed our own index, which makes us fully independent.

That's very impressive

Neevt is entirely ad-free, we use Ads by Google on our other products. We are currently exploring alternatives to Ads by Google, and I would be more than happy if you could recommend one.

I have no idea. Honestly I don't mind some ads, as long as they are not obtrusive and clearly distinguished from other results. Might even turn off the adblocker for a site like that - ads might be useful in some cases.

Maybe you can team up with Vivaldi at some point in the near future, and Neevt could be included as a standard engine

davidsundberg

@Pathduck said in Guide | Vivaldi search engines collection :

Maybe you can team up with Vivaldi at some point in the near future, and Neevt could be included as a standard engine

I'll definitely look into it.

Catweazle

@davidsundberg, apart of this, welcome to the Vivaldi community

wintercoast

@Pathduck said in Guide | Vivaldi search engines collection :

Oh and Safe Search should be off by default. We're all adults on the internets. The easily offended should go use Bing Chat or whatever.

I disagree. It should be on by default. It's not so much a question of being offended but I don't want potentially "nasty" stuff cluttering up the results in a casual search.

wintercoast

@stardepp said in Guide | Vivaldi search engines collection :

collecting search engines is a hobby of mine

I have quite a few hooked up to shortcuts, so I can compare on the fly. It gets especially interesting when a controversial topic or new website pops up and I can investigate how timely they are at retrieving it and/or how biased they are. Google is notoriously and provably politically biased. Yandex appears to be the least biased on average, which is kind of ironic.

stardepp

@wintercoast Yandex is not a bit better than Google. Ecosia and Duck Duck Go are very trustworthy.

wintercoast

@stardepp To elaborate, I think Google is still the best search engine overall for general searches.

For controversial topics (meaning controversial to the establishment, not necessarily to the average person) the likes of DDG are less biased. DDG and most of the others use Bing's web index though and the results tend to be near-identical to Bing's when I've tested. But Bing is also a bit biased, just much less so than Google.

A while back someone conducted a series of experiments across a bunch of different browsers on controversial topics and Yandex came out top. I think this was posted on a Substack last year. But anecdotally, I've found the same.

However, the search engines can also "right" themselves over a period of time. Google certainly does when put under scrutiny. Prof Robert Epstein has done deep analysis on this.