Whoogle, privacy respecting search on docker

I'm clearly looking to self-host all the things™ and one of those things would very pleasantly be a private search engine. That's where Whoogle comes in, making the experience of searching the internet as private as it can possibly be, that is… After the day marketers took over the net and turned it into this twisted sad reality it is today.

You can find out more on the GitHub page and install it with a simple docker-compose YAML provided on the page.

Keep in mind that this search page should only be made available on your local network, preferably through a VPN to an external VPS that hosts the server. This is preferred so that your home public IP isn't the one being tracked by the search engines that actually provide the results to Whoogle.

If you like to live dangerously on the other hand you can set login credentials, put it behind a reverse proxy and set it free on the net, crossing fingers afterwards. I'm sure it's safe, it's just a risk I'm not willing to take.

I use this docker-compose YAML file to deploy Whoogle locally on port 5000.

If you choose to deploy it with docker you should note that there are no volumes that need mapping on the host machine, just your choice of a port for the communication.

I will build up some more experience with this app and I will report my findings on a future post.