I’ve recently found out about https://search.marginalia.nu and want to start using it.
I switched to DuckDuckGo for a few years, then went to Ecosia for a while, and now I’m using searx. I’m not sure how searx prioritises the results, so I’m still adjusting to it, but overall it works okay.
kagi.com for me has been more than worth it for the price with unlimited searches.
CEO of Kagi has no boundaries and doesn’t know how to take “no” for an answer. He thinks he can just browbeat other people into agreeing with him. It’s a bad look and makes me have zero trust in Kagi as a product.
https://discuss.techlore.tech/t/kagi-ceo-s-recent-controversy/8119/2
I said elsewhere just a few days ago: These fucking techbros need to realize that sometimes shutting the fuck up and letting your products speak for themselves is the better move than trying to browbeat everyone into acceptance of your view of your products. Prelovac’s insistence on being heard by someone who has no interest in a conversation with him screams entitlement and a controlling attitude. People who can’t take no for an answer generally are not good people. Not being able to accept someone else’s lack of consent and wanting to bully them into consent is a bad fucking look, period.
It feels like this is the only bad thing about kagi that keeps getting shared every time kagi is mentioned. Somehow it feels like one person and their followers trying to promote themselves as Karen’s more than legitimate accusations.
A CEO getting involved with the end users is not a bad thing imo
When I read your post I was expecting something much worse than what you linked to.
It wasn’t really all that bad. Imo, it was 1 or 2 emails too many.
Maybe I’m a little biased because I love the product so much. It’s a fantastic search engine again and all of the AI extras add value and aren’t obnoxious like everyone else’s.
I am still happily paying for kagi even if the CEO emails people that write shitty blogs about them.
Cool
Stop using Google. You can’t change them, you have to leave.
DDG drops ads in results too just not as many yet
I’m using Duck Duck Go now.
I swapped to ddg about a year ago. I’ve noticed their search results are not the greatest either. There is so much spam and paid articles that make it to the top search results I often end up frustrated trying to find what I’m looking for.
The Internet really is enshittified.
To be fair I think DDG has improved marginally over the years while Google is simply shit now. I feel like spam sites are quite prevalent on Google but less so on DDG.
You can also look into Ghostery private search also. I’ve been using it some and it appears to be at least as good as DDG. YMMV
I am also considering switching to Bing.
Is it a viable alternative? How is it going?
It struggles when you have more than one word, it will ignore context and give you results with maximum number of either word. Still better than Google at this point, though.
works fine for me, and their implementation of AI (only letting it use wikipedia and maybe some select other sources) is pretty nice IMO, perfect for answering questions like “how many people live in X Y Z cities in total?”.
I’ve been using it for years at this point, and I really prefer it to google. For most of my common/easy searches, it gets what I want pretty reliably. Occasionally I’ll have more obscure searches where I do have to switch back to Google, but honestly Google feels less and less helpful for that as time goes on. To add, DDG has bangs which are just wonderfully handy. Turning your search into a google search is as simple as adding “!g” to your query, and it’ll redirect the search. There are tons of other ones too, it’s a really nice feature that makes DDG more convenient in a lot of cases. Very much worth trying out at least
TIL bangs. Thanks!!
!w for Wikipedia is a good one
It’s really good these days. Kagi is still the beat, but if you want free, DDG is the way to go.
I’ll have to give this kagi a shot I never heard of it! DDG just doesn’t ever seem give me what I want and I’ve been trying it forever. It’s like I’m always playing this cat and mouse game with the search engine and it just gives me alllllmost what I want but not quite.
It’s not free, but I find it worthwhile. I really hope Apple includes it as a default engine in the next update.
Kagi doesn’t sell you shit, so if you use Google for that, you can’t get that replacement data:
I’ve been using kagi for 6 months or so.
It’s lit.
I’ve been using duck duck go for months now. It’s totally cromulent in my opinion!
Free Google (& other) proxy: SearXNG
Further reading / Instances: Searx.space
One good instance: SearXNG.site
For basic searches (kinda a Bing reseller with disappointing results): DuckDuckGo
Vote-with-your-wallet alternative: Kagi (who may have astroturfed or may have not, but great engine at $10/mo unlimited - have tried their free trial)
Comments of mine RE: why everybody’s just reselling search ($1b+/yr to operate your own crawler): one and two
Same, but lately Bing fucked with their pricing, and now the search results are usually garbage. I have to go re-search the query in Google way too often.
I’ve just switch from DDG to Qwant. I didn’t do research about how they make there algorithm but DDG that IS to say Being was returning me unrelated stuff and even things I ask not to see in my request. The result is not amazing quality but no more amazingly bad quality.
I want to learn more about search algorithm, what there referencement politic is and what use of AI they have. It not possible today to pick a search engin algorithm randomly and get pertinent résultat like it was two years ago.
this is wrong, because today you won’t find the thing you’re looking for at all. Just 100 results where one word of your 5 word query vaguely matches.
but this doesn’t depict results you’re looking for in “now” unless you assume it is a product search.
edit: I see the yellow is supposed to be the same result. I am ashamed
And then you notice that your search term was “corrected” to something completely different. Looking at you too, Amazon.
i follow a channel on youtube called yitube that’s impossible to look up because it gets corrected to youtube. it’s maddening.
Fuuuuuuuck Amazon is even worse, if that’s possible. You used to be able to search for a product and would get that as the first result or at least on the first page. Now, they just return shit that is vaguely related but is a paid sponsor or someone manipulating their search algorithms.
Use Ecosia.
I tried it on mobile for a little while but they’ve got this privacy notice that takes up half the screen and their results are pretty shit too.
Presumably you can dismiss that, because I don’t see it. The results are just okay, but they’re leagues ahead of Google. Plus, you know, trees.
Same with visiting almost any website.
Then
- Click on link to website.
- Read website.
Now
- Click on link to website.
- Click on Cookie options.
- Scroll down looking for ‘Reject All’.
- Discover there is no ‘Reject All’.
- Scroll back through list turning off all optional cookies.
- Scroll back to the bottom to click on ‘Confirm my choices’.
- Hunt for the close X on the ‘Subscribe to our newsletter’ pop-up.
- Click on the close X on the ‘Subscribe to our newsletter’ pop-up.
- Read the website.
- Discover the website is just more AI generated SEO garbage.
- Go outside, walk on the grass barefoot, weep for the future of humanity.
Been like this for years now, I jumped ship 4 years ago to DuckDuckGo, might even jump that ship if it gets any worse, but alternatives…
I tried using DDG for about 3 months, until I had to ditch it. I want to use it, but its results are even worse than Googles.
While on Google I might have to scroll past the ads, sponsored links and obvious AI blog results, the first page will usually at least contain a relevant result somewhere, whereas DDG simply doesn’t bother to show any relevant results at all. Even on it’s first page, it will stray far from the actual search term.
I’m currently prioritizing DuckDuckGo over Google and others for a better quality of search results. There ain’t much ads to mess your attention, and the results are quite good most of the time.
&udm=14 is a temporary fix for those who still feel the need to use Google’s search.
Paid search isn’t the solution, as evidenced by the untrustworthiness of the CEO of Kagi search.
What I would like to see is a non-profit search.
Google wanted to organize all the world’s information to make it useful. Sounds like a great idea destroyed by a profit motive getting in the middle. Try the same idea without the profit motive and you’ll probably end up creating something people will defend endlessly, like Wikipedia.
What if your search engine asked you for a five dollar donation, once a year, the way Wikipedia does?
Search engines should be non-profit, honestly, they should be an extension of Public Libraries.
I haven’t kept up on this controversy, but is this really all there is to it? People think the service is untrustworthy because the CEO tried a bit too hard to convince a critical blogger, according to the comments possibly due to neurodivergence?
Read the blog post. I can totally see where the writer is coming from. Vlad’s email responses are pretty laughable with that added context. Not only did they tell him they weren’t interested in engaging, but the responses he sent anyways thoroughly dodged the substance of their arguments. They did their research and came to pretty reasonable conclusions, and vlad totally talked around/failed to address the points that really matter. Kinda slimy ngl.
I can also see from the highlighted discord exchanges why they weren’t interested in engaging with him further. Sure he “responds” to everything, but he doesn’t really engage with constructive criticism. Whether or not the guy is autistic isn’t really relevant to whether he can run the business competently and make sure questions are answered in an honest and transparent manner.
What does &udm=14 do?
It’s the equivalent of doing a Google search and then clicking on the “Web” tab for results.
Clicking on “Web” manually inserts the &udm=14 at the end of the search string. I believe udm is just classifying which type of search to run, and this is a basic “web search” with no gimmicks.
&udm=14 is fancy for nerds who think they’re special but for anyone else it’s just clicking on “Web” results.
I did not even know they separated out Web searches until I came to your comment. Super useful, thank you.
Do you mean to tell me that I keep scrolling I’ll eventually get to the yellow promised land?
Just one more “o”, maybe it will be there…
that’s what she said
I just subscribed to Kagi to try it out.
Great! Everyone should try the free tier just to have a look at alternatives. To be honest after a few weeks and several specific searches I’m not ready to do the switch though.
butlerian jihad?
For the unaware, this is a scifi term which describe humans overthrowing robot overlords.
by using uBlock Origin, uBlacklist, and then something other than Google.
