Wow firefox makes it hard to add custom search engines. If you're using google and want it to default to the quietly launched "web results only no AI shit" view:

Dave Anderson

Open about:config, set the pref "browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh" to true. You may have to create the pref, or it may exist and be false.

Open about:preferences#search, scroll to bottom, you can now add a search engine (that's what the pref above does)

Add engine for https://www.google.com/q=%s&udm=14, save, make default.

Dave Anderson

Alternatively you could add the extension someone published to the addon store 20 hours ago that allegedly does this but whose source code link doesn't seem to be a firefox addon and also has 0 installs.

Or you could visit http://tenbluelinks.org/ and install the search engine that way, but be aware the site sets itself as an auto-update source for said engine and so could silently update itself to something unexpected later.

Dave Anderson

(note I have no reason to believe tenbluelinks has malicious intent, I just don't know who runs it and who might own or pwn the domain in future and get the ability to siphon search results)

(also please don't suggest kagi, while I would gladly pay for a decent search engine kagi is more than a little fash and also drinking the AI koolaid as fast as it can be dispensed)

julian

@[email protected] what about Duck? Should I have qualms about using it?

N.B. I'm lazy as heck and probably won't change my search engine from DDG unless they do something completely egregious.

Dave Anderson

@julian I don't know of anything egregious. They're also breathlessly running into AI and trying to make a thing that answers questions instead of trying to be the best index of the web, and that's a shame. They also get most results from Bing, but again that's pretty par for the course for smaller engines.

So if you can turn off the AI dross, or you like the AI dross, seems plausibly okay?

Dave Anderson

@julian Oh and I guess given how things went with chrome and edge, I get a little bit of a sinking feeling when a company decides it wants to have both a browser and a search engine, and it represents another split in focus from trying to be the best possible search engine. I understand why they're doing it, but it suggests some misalignment with what I (think I) value personally.

If I could pay a subscription in lieu of ads... I might consider their search, maybe. Dunno.

Dave Anderson

I've also been pointed to https://udm14.com/ , which after loading the site you can right-click the URL bar and add a "udm14" search engine, which you can then make the default. At time of writing this, I've verified that the OpenSearch engine definition (https://udm14.com/search.xml) sends queries straight to google with no intermediary, and also does _not_ come with an auto-update configuration that might silently change that later.