The fact that this isn’t the first time I’ve seen someone make that false equivalence demonstrates pretty well the problem that comes when a small number of instances have the majority of Lemmy’s total users. I chose a small instance myself, partially to do my part in avoiding this issue, but the consolidation will likely continue to be a big problem until a good solution can be thought up and implemented.
You’re technically right that it gets its results from many sources, but most (like the vast majority) of the results come from Bing. they even admit it themselves right on their help page.
This is in contrast with Brave search which gets its results entirely from its own index, unless you enable the “google fallback mixing” option.
I use both search engines myself, as well as Searxng. Also Brave search basically has nothing to do with the Brave browser except that it’s by the same company. I don’t use the browser, but the search engine is pretty cool.
He said brave search. It has an independent index, so that’s a pretty notable difference from something like Duckduckgo which IIRC uses Bing under the hood. The googles features is also a really cool idea! I just wish there was a way to make private googles for just yourself.
The fact that this isn’t the first time I’ve seen someone make that false equivalence demonstrates pretty well the problem that comes when a small number of instances have the majority of Lemmy’s total users. I chose a small instance myself, partially to do my part in avoiding this issue, but the consolidation will likely continue to be a big problem until a good solution can be thought up and implemented.