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+---
+title: "How to search Google without using Google, the self-hosted way"
+date: 2020-06-22T10:07:12-03:00
+lastmod: 2020-06-22T10:07:12-03:00
+tags : [ "degoogle", "selfhosted", "devops" ]
+---
+
+Hello everyone! 
+
+Last week I was talking with a friend and he was complaining about how Google knows everything about us,
+so I took the chance to recommend some degoogled alternatives: I sent him my blog, recommended DuckDuckGo,
+Nextcloud, Protonmail, etc. He really liked my suggestions and promised to try DuckDuckGo. A couple of 
+days later he came to me a little defeated, because he didn't like the search results on DuckDuckGo and 
+felt bad going back to Google.
+
+So that got me thinking: **Are there some degoogled search engines that use Google as the backend but 
+respect our privacy?**
+
+So I went looking and found a couple of really interesting options.
+
+# [Startpage.com](https://startpage.com/)
+
+According to their [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startpage.com):
+
+> Startpage is a web search engine that highlights privacy as its distinguishing feature. Previously, it 
+> was known as the metasearch engine Ixquick
+
+> ...
+
+> On 7 July 2009, Ixquick launched Startpage.com to offer its service at a URL that is both easier to 
+> remember and spell. In contrast to Ixquick.eu, **Startpage.com fetches results from the Google search 
+> engine**. This is done **without saving user IP addresses or giving any personal user information to 
+> Google's servers**.
+
+and their own [website](https://startpage.com/):
+
+> You can’t beat Google when it comes to online search. So we’re paying them to use their brilliant
+> search results in order to remove all trackers and logs. The result: The world’s best and most private
+> search engine. Only now you can search without ads following you around, recommending products you’ve
+> already bought. And no more data mining by companies with dubious intentions. We want you to dance like
+> nobody’s watching and search like nobody’s watching.
+
+![2020-06-18-110253](/2020-06-18-110253.png)
+
+So this was a good solution for my friend: He could still keep his Google search results while using a
+search engine that respects his privacy
+
+But that wasn't enough for me. You know I love self-hosting, so I wanted to find a solution I could run
+inside my own server because that's the only way I can be 100% sure that my searches are private and no
+logs are kept on my searches, So I went to my second option: Searx
+
+# [Searx](https://searx.me/)
+
+According to their [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searx)
+
+> searx (/sɜːrks/) is a free metasearch engine, available under the GNU Affero General Public License
+> version 3, with the aim of protecting the privacy of its users. To this end, searx does not share
+> users' IP addresses or search history with the search engines from which it gathers results. Tracking
+> cookies served by the search engines are blocked, preventing user-profiling-based results modification.
+> By default, searx queries are submitted via HTTP POST, to prevent users' query keywords from appearing
+> in webserver logs. searx was inspired by the Seeks project, though it does not implement Seeks'
+> peer-to-peer user-sourced results ranking.
+
+> ...
+
+> Any user **may run their own instance of searx, which can be done to maximize privacy**, to avoid
+> congestion on public instances, to preserve customized settings even if browser cookies are cleared, to
+> allow auditing of the source code being run, etc.
+
+And that's what I wanted: To host my own Searx instance on my server. And nicely enough, they supported
+[Docker out of the box](https://github.com/asciimoo/searx#installation) :) 
+
+So I created my own `docker-compose` based on their `docker-compose`:
+
+```yml
+version: '3.7'
+
+services:
+
+  filtron:
+    container_name: filtron
+    image: dalf/filtron
+    restart: always
+    ports:
+      - 4040:4040
+      - 4041:4041
+    command: -listen 0.0.0.0:4040 -api 0.0.0.0:4041 -target 0.0.0.0:8082
+    volumes:
+      - ./rules.json:/etc/filtron/rules.json:rw
+    read_only: true
+    cap_drop:
+      - ALL
+    network_mode: host
+
+  searx:
+    container_name: searx
+    image: searx/searx:latest
+    restart: always
+    command: -f
+    volumes:
+      - ./searx:/etc/searx:rw
+    environment:
+      - BIND_ADDRESS=0.0.0.0:8082
+      - BASE_URL=https://myurl.com/
+      - MORTY_URL=https://myurl.com/
+      - MORTY_KEY=mysupersecretkey
+    cap_drop:
+      - ALL
+    cap_add:
+      - CHOWN
+      - SETGID
+      - SETUID
+      - DAC_OVERRIDE
+    network_mode: host
+
+  morty:
+    container_name: morty
+    image: dalf/morty
+    restart: always
+    ports:
+      - 3000:3000
+    command: -listen 0.0.0.0:3000 -timeout 6 -ipv6
+    environment:
+      - MORTY_KEY=mysupersecretkey
+    logging:
+      driver: none
+    read_only: true
+    cap_drop:
+      - ALL
+    network_mode: host
+
+  searx-checker:
+    container_name: searx-checker
+    image: searx/searx-checker
+    restart: always
+    command: -cron -o html/data/status.json http://localhost:8082
+    volumes:
+      - searx-checker:/usr/local/searx-checker/html/data:rw
+    network_mode: host
+
+volumes:
+  searx-checker:
+```
+
+And that was it! I had my own Searx instance, that uses Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and many other
+sources to search around the web. 
+
+![2020-06-18-124302](/2020-06-18-124302.png)
+![2020-06-18-124707](/2020-06-18-124707.png)
+
+## Don't want to host your own instance? Use a public one!
+
+Searx has a lot of public instances on their website, in case you don't want to self-host your instance
+but still want all the benefits of using Searx. You can check the list here: https://searx.space/
+
+# Conclusion
+
+I really like DuckDuckGo. I think it is a very good project that takes privacy to the hands of
+non-technical people, but I also know that "You can’t beat Google when it comes to online search"[^1].
+It is definitely possible to get good search results using privacy oriented alternatives, and in the end,
+it is a very cool and rewarding experience.
+
+I seriously recommend you to use https://startpage.com, one of the instances listed in
+https://searx.space, or better yet, if you have the knowledge and the resources, to self-host your own
+Searx instance and start searching the web without a big corporation watching every move you make.
+
+Stay private.
+
+[^1]: Taken from the Startpage website
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