this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2025
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[–] jet@hackertalks.com 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Kinda expected, I always disable leta when I setup a mullvad browser.

The biggest killer was not being able to go to the original engine. Let's search for the image of a duck, oh leta doesn't do images, ok open this search in Google... Not a option either. Adds lots of friction

I like the DDG option of having a g! Escape to Google with my query if I need it.

[–] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 48 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The search industry continues to undergo big changes. Leta will not be able to follow and will likely become less useful over time.

None of the "Big changes" of late have improved the user experience, absolutely nobody who'd use Leta would complain that it doesn't have AI summaries or whatever other bullshit.

Does this feel like a big cop out to anyone else? How weird...

[–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 4 points 23 hours ago

I doubt they’re referring to feature parity WRT machine learning summaries and the like. “Less useful over time” is more likely a gentle way of saying ungraceful performance degradation.

Escalation in the SEO wars is accelerating. Various culprits but obviously generative NLP technologies designed specifically to sound human are nukes in this metaphor.

Any index developer that isn’t willing or can’t afford to continue fighting the war must choose:

  1. host a legacy product that rapidly enshittifies
  2. pull the plug now while it still works

If the index is the developer’s only product, the only real risk of option 1 is damaging their street cred.

In OP’s case, the index was not even their core product, so option 2 was the wiser decision.

[–] AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip 22 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I hope this is a joke, because it's the most useful search engine I have ever used in the past decade.

Cannot speak for anyone else, but I have been having problems with my preferred SearXNG instances returning garbage results that have nothing to do with what I searched. Before anyone asks, no I am unable to self-host my own personal instance and don't feel like changing settings every time I close and reopen my browser.

[–] far_university1990@reddthat.com 3 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

For me disable bing and yahoo make better. And google look like not return result anymore.

Edit: Setting saved in cookie. If browser autodelete cookie, add exclude for searxng instance domain.

[–] AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I'll have to look up how to do that cookie autodelete thing because I clearly never thought of anything like that. Thanks for the idea.

[–] far_university1990@reddthat.com 1 points 5 hours ago

For firefox: settings -> privacy & security -> cookies and site data -> manage exceptions

[–] scytale@piefed.zip 34 points 1 day ago (3 children)

No way! Is that why it’s been timing out a lot lately? Oh man, I like Leta. I’ve been using it for several months now. Sigh, I guess it’s back to startpage (and ddg).

[–] kami@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 day ago

I recently discovered Marginalia and I am gonna test it now

[–] cardfire@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I just need a search engine the will also give calculator and unit conversation results. Everything else sounds be search results.

At this point, it's been too many years that I will just query "76 f in c" or "2500*12/3" from my url bar, so this I appreciate the most modest "intelligence" from my web browser.

Literally everything else makes my experience worse, though.

So I'm taking recommendations for more search engines to try out. I don't know why I start page bothers me so much, but it feels like the results my ISP would give me through DNS capture a decade and two ago.

[–] Riffz7@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

you might be able to wire up https://www.wolframalpha.com/ to your search bar for those sort of conversions or calculations. I love using it for time conversions or time zone conversions.

[–] mouse@midwest.social 4 points 1 day ago

There's also 4get that is similar to SearXNG. https://4get.ca/

I have not tried it much personally though.

git repo: https://git.lolcat.ca/lolcat/4get

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

DuckDuckGo still does that, and it generates UUIDs too, which is nice.

[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago

I never thought to use a search engine to generate a UUID. Interesting.

[–] bluemoon@piefed.social 2 points 1 day ago

and Mojeek =^]

[–] curry@programming.dev 18 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Misread as their vpn service and had a mini heart attack.

[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I never knew this SE was even a thing.

[–] JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world 4 points 22 hours ago

I'm adding this to the list of things that I would have used if not for learning about it from a shutdown announcement.

[–] artyom@piefed.social 17 points 1 day ago

Similar privacy can be achieved through the combination of a VPN and a privacy-focused browser. We have therefore decided to discontinue Leta and continue to advance the development of state-of-the-art of VPNs and browser privacy

[–] net00@lemmy.today 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I was just starting to use it, damn. I wonder if google has tried to take them down for using their search results...

I was thinking of setting up my own searxng instance, but I know they do have problems with google results now.

Not sure about goog results but I love my SearxNG service. Works well, fast enough for me.

[–] thatonecoder@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 day ago

This was unfortunately expected.