Unfortunately Qwant is free. I really want to pay a one-off fee to remove ads but that’s not an option. It’s also less feature-rich than Kagi (can’t hide certain domains from search, for example). Also, it blocks me from using it whenever I set my VPN to singapore because they haven’t set up ads there yet.
What makes Qwant noteworthy is that it uses it’s own web-crawler. And unlike Mojeek this web-crawler is half-way decent, although it is weirdly common for pornography to come up. Most other search engines are based on either Google or Bing.
Do VPN’s actually protect against any of that? They’re basically only useful if you want to get around your country’s internet filters, log into a website that has blocked your IP, or hide your traffic from the government (and in the latter’s case, Tor is probably a better pick).
I guess it may help with tracking, but there are so many ways in which your tracked, is your IP even one of them?