I think you confuse search engines with AI. Search engines are supposed to index, not “steal”. I also questioned the legality, not what your moral compass is saying.

Companies like DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, and StartPage pay Bing and Google to use their search index/API to get search results.

DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, and StartPage fund themselves through search advertising.

Brave Search uses its own search index, which they also sell access to, and they fund themselves through search advertising or an optional ad-free premium subscription.

SearXNG scrapes the search results without providing any monetary value to the search engine providers who are offering the service.

I’m questioning the legality of SearXNG, as it scrapes results from other search engines without paying, from my understanding.

I appreciate the comment, thank you!