this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2023
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I'm still trying to de-Google my life, little by little. I don't trust Bing for similar reasons. DDG is feeling shady of late. What's the search engine you all recommend that I can inject into my daily life? Is there perhaps a search engine that is focused on code, or have we just all moved on to AI for searching?

Edit: I meant to also express my frustration that most browsers do not let you select a "default search engine" that can be used in the address bar aside from 3-5 pre-chosen engines. Seems like 2023 we should be able to customize that to our own liking.

Edit 2: Thanks for the recommendation of Kagi. I'm going to roll with it for a while. I see they have an extension for Safari that allows them to hijack the address bar, which is just what I needed.

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[–] Anticorp@lemmy.ml 25 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Kagi. Nothing else even comes close. Kagi is what Google used to be, before they decided they'll show you whatever is profitable, rather than what they know you're looking for.

[–] MSids@lemmy.world 22 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Not sure I'm ready to pay for search especially not at $5-10/mo.

[–] COASTER1921@lemmy.ml 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yep. Like $1.99 or $2.99 I can easily justify but $5/mo for only 300 searches feels too steep to me reguardless of result quality. I'll just go through the other pages of results from any other search engine.

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.ml 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

$10 gets you unlimited searches now. Idk about you, but I was continually frustrated with the results from all of the other search engines. I figured $10 is a small cost for my sanity, and privacy.

[–] mammut@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

How does it compare to Mojeek? Some of my friends were frustrated with most of the big players until they tried Mojeek, and they've been happy with it.

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago

I haven't heard of that service before, so I can't say.

[–] TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz 2 points 10 months ago (3 children)

If you're not spending some money then you're not the customer, you're the product. Would you really prefer the web continue to be supported by ads and people who sell data about you?

[–] mammut@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

It's also important to keep in mind that you can still be the product even when you're paying. A lot of companies like to double dip. They'll charge you to use the service and then also make additional money by selling your data. Or make additional money by having ads (even on a paid service).

And it's further complicated by the fact that paid companies often know more about you than unpaid ones. If I go to Bing and do a free search, they don't know my billing address, credit card number, real name, or any of that (probably, unless you linked an account). If I pay for Kagi, they probably know all of that information that Bing doesn't. To me, this also raises questions with government surveillance. The government can potentially force Kagi to monitor all of John Doe's searches, but if John Doe is using a VPN and not logging into Brave Search (or Bing or Google or whatever), they probably can't monitor that because they don't know which search session belongs to John Doe.

If they could find a way to have people pay without having any technical way to connect the searches with the paid account that made the searches, it would be much better IMO. (I don't know if this would be possible, but there might be a way they could do something like generate anonymous search keys that authorize searches but aren't tied to an account, kinda like one time use API keys. This would also allow you to "gift" a search to other users by sharing keys, which would be both good and bad.)

[–] blurg@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

If you’re not spending some money then you’re not the customer, you’re the product.

  • BSD (e.g. FreeBSD, OpenBSD, ...)
  • GNU/Linux (e.g. kernel, Ubuntu, Mint, Arch, ...)
  • GNU/FSF/FOSS software (e.g. LibreOffice, Vim, Emacs, , Compiler Collection, Gnome & KDE desktop, GIMP, VLC, Wine, Python, ...)
  • Misc. (e.g. Wikipedia (& Kiwix), Gutenberg (& Calibre), Archive.org, CreativeCommons,org, OpenStreetMap, Lemmy, R, ...)
  • Plenty of public schools, public library, charities, ...

Would like to argue with you. However, supporting these projects directly, if you can afford to, is something of a personal responsibility.

[–] MadhuGururajan@programming.dev -5 points 10 months ago (3 children)

People can do without search. Most will find better uses for 10$ an hour. Those who can't probably won't buy search. So, lose-lose for you who tries to convince people in every post.

[–] RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

$10/mo, not hour, god that would be an insane search bill

[–] MadhuGururajan@programming.dev 1 points 10 months ago

Funny i understood it meant $10 per month but made the mistake typing.

[–] kilgore_trout@feddit.it 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

People can do without search

This post is specifically asking for a search engine recommendation.

[–] MadhuGururajan@programming.dev 1 points 10 months ago

Yeah but they aren't coming in here for the lack of options. They wanted to hear what's everybody else on. I suppose you can make the argument that demand is there for paid search.. but that's because people have trained helplessness. Apart from 1 paid company i am not sure if people will have appetite for more companies in this space.. because enshittification will happen here too.

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.ml 4 points 10 months ago

It's $5-$10 per month, not $10 per hour. LOL

[–] ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I appreciate the non-ad-funded option, even if it is expensive, but I'm not sure it's even better than Google, looking at their sample results.

For example, Steve Jobs (again, to be clear, this is the result they specifically provide as an example of why you should pay) has two different links to the same Wikipedia article in the first five results. https://kagi.com/search?q=steve+jobs

Not to put you on the spot, but I'm still open to be convinced - do you have any examples of when Kagi did a great job to compare?

[–] mammut@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

Those are also very similar results to Mojeek, and Mojeek is free and was one of the first engines with a "no tracking" policy. https://www.mojeek.com/search?q=Steve+Jobs