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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.
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.
## 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
|
