Good European browsers and search engines to reccomend? (Privacy-focused and open source ideal) (piefed.social)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by BoulderHole@piefed.social to c/buyeuropean@feddit.uk

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I currently use Firefox and DuckDuckGo, but I'm thinking about getting a new browser and search engine. Are there any good recommendations. Privacy-focused is non-negotiable, and i would like it to be open source.

I have heard of Ecosia. How exactly do they work? If they truly do help the environment, like they claim, I may look into that. Is there any evidence? Looking into their privacy policy, it doesn't seem too optimal.

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[-] jdr@lemmy.ml 30 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

There are only really two and a half browsers; Firefox and Chrome/Safari. Firefox (engine: Gecko) is descended from Netscape (which was American) and Chrome (Blink, fork of WebKit) and Safari (WebKit, fork of KHTML) are descended from Konqueror (KHTML, German, abandoned). Everything else (almost) is a reskin of one of those.

There are two up-and-comers, Servo (cancelled Gecko replacement, now resurrected by Igalia in Spain) and Ladybird (Swedish). I'd love to use either, but they're not ready yet. These (and all the other little independent browsers that aren't just Chrome/Safari/Firefox with a new hat) are awesome, but will fail on the shitty "modern" websites you're inevitably forced to use.

(To some extent all of the above mentioned browsers are open-source and not really just developed in one country, but I'm simplifying for the sake of choosing whether they're European or not.)

[-] FLP22012005@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago

While the actual rendering engine is important, I don't think that is the component that collects and sells your data.

[-] jdr@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 hours ago

Fair point. I naively assumed that a) people turn this off in the settings, and b) the big browsers respect the settings. Trying to use a web browser without getting fucked over is exhausting. It's fine if you just want to scroll Lemmy, but once you need to book flights or log in to some bullshit from your school or work it's hard to use anything that isn't corporate-blessed.

[-] BoulderHole@piefed.social 2 points 1 day ago

Thanks for the info!

this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2026

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