cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/47107360
Google is making its Search more centred around AI, turning it into a conversation.
Besides being a worse experience, the websites from which it sources its information are losing all traffic and recognition.
Recommend a list of alternatives:
- Kagi - Paid but better experience than Google
- Ecosia - Similar experience while supporting a good cause
- Qwant - Increasingly unique results and building a EU-first index
- DuckDuckGo - Privacy-focused search, but quality of results may vary
More options: https://purchasewithpurpose.io/category/search-engine/
80 Comments
theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world · 100 pts · 99d
Google Search has long since diminished from it's peak. 15 years ago we used to play a "game" by describing something as vaguely or strangely as possible and would be entertained to find it still on the first page of search results.
SEO and paid ranking caused a steady decline in Google search performance, and LLMs are the kill shot.
Indexing and ranking were already a solved problem, and conventional algorithms accomplished it much better than LLMs do. Unfortunately, LLMs need to find uses to justify investment, so now they must be used for any task that they can be used for, even if its worse than the solutions that we already had.
_haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works · 42 pts · 99d
Like Gemini replacing Assistant. Holy shit, what a dumpster fire.
bedwyr@piefed.ca · 15 pts · 99d
The other factor is companies, interests, paying the Google and their ilk to not include things in search results. And only include what they choose as an alternative.
Then you might have different interests gaming the search results to bury something they don't like.
theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 99d
This is only amplified by LLMs
MangoCats@feddit.it · 2 pts · 99d
At the moment, I do find that the LLMs bring me more of what I want to see than the basic search engine used to a few years back... 15-20 years ago the basic search engine seemed to be much better then slowly deteriorated from there.
I have confidence, they'll sell this version to the highest bidder faster than they did the last one, then it will be just as bad as listening to radio advertisements as a way to find a good local restaurant to eat at...
fodor@lemmy.zip · 7 pts · 98d
lechekaflan@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 98d
Yeah, this much started eating into the users' need for that one good answer.
eestileib@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 98d
Absolutely nailed it.
db2@lemmy.world · 42 pts · 99d
Google search as I know it shit the bed over a decade ago.
WaxRhetorical@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 99d
Yeah, it's so tiring. Search for something, entire first page is useless aggregator sites, containing nothing about the actual topic other than keywords. Waste of time
MangoCats@feddit.it · 1 pts · 99d
Agreed, and for the moment the "AI experience" is better than what Google Search was a couple of years ago... but I have faith, they'll sell this one out too, after all: users are the product.
blargh513@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 98d
That is the point. Search is free. You will be paying for ai soon. If you don't then you'll get the low-quality results. This is nothing more than greed. They were making lots of money with search, but like everything in the modern world, businesses only exist now to extinguish what was free or a good value and sell the same thing back at an extreme markup.
Furniture was made of wood. Now it's mostly disposable composite junk. Wood, now commands a high premium.
Household goods like toasters, irons, lamps, sofas were all at one point made to be durable. Many people would buy these things and maybe replace them every 15-20 years. Now the same stuff lasts five if you're lucky.
MangoCats@feddit.it · 2 pts · 97d
That is already the reality.
I frequently point out that "Organic" food is basically what we got as normal food in 1972.
anomnom@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 97d
When ads became more important than search results. The more searches you need to attempt, the more ads they get to auction off companies who are still dumb enough to think search ads work.
melfie@lemmy.zip · 35 pts · 99d
I wouldn’t know because I mainly use DuckDuckGo and haven’t had a reason to use Google in a long time.
CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works · 22 pts · 99d
DuckDuckGo is just Microslop Bing with a different front-end.
melfie@lemmy.zip · 16 pts · 99d
Yeah, whatever bias and censorship Micro$lop’s search index has, except supposedly without the tracking. It’s a step up from Google and Bing, but not the perfect solution.
QueenFern@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 99d
What do you recommend?
Scrollone@feddit.it · 8 pts · 98d
If you live in Europe, the French search engine Qwant is great.
AverageEarthling@feddit.online · 2 pts · 98d
yacy is an interesting alternative if you self host.
sem@piefed.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 99d
I recommend DDG as the first line, and kagi free tier if you can't find it on DDG.
Marthirial@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 98d
Kagi. It does work and they are making anti AI a priority.
adam_y@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 98d
CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works · -4 pts · 99d
I, as of yet, haven't really explored any alternatives, but I see a lot of others mentioned in the comments here.
littleomid@feddit.org · -15 pts · 99d
Not using meta search engines and going directly to the sites with the info and searching them for instance.
ObsidianZed@lemmy.world · 25 pts · 99d
Ah yes, good thing I kept a rolodex of websites for every useful website that I might need.
clif@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 99d
Can you search your rolodex for "caddy tls configuration" for me?
littleomid@feddit.org · 5 pts · 98d
https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile/directives/tls
clif@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 98d
Thanks fri... wait, you're not who I replied to. Do you have your own rolodex of websites?
littleomid@feddit.org · -5 pts · 98d
Don’t be daft. You don’t need to know more than the dozen you already know. Wikimedia, stack overflow, Reddit and whatnot. For everything else you can still use a meta search engine.
ObsidianZed@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 98d
So your suggesting to stop using meta search engines unless you need meta search engines?
littleomid@feddit.org · 3 pts · 98d
Exactly. My recommendation is to rely less on metasearch engines.
Infernal_pizza@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 98d
Isn't every alternative search engine just bing or google in the background?
bss03@infosec.pub · 4 pts · 97d
Not all, but mostly, yes: https://hachyderm.io/@BoydStephenSmithJr/116609141864889111
JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca · 28 pts · 99d
Ugh, damn post title. I went through the whole article looking for the alternatives before realizing the title of the article says nothing about alternatives.
GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml · 12 pts · 99d
Didnt bother with the article but
https://noai.duckduckgo.com/ Is an option
village604@adultswim.fan · 15 pts · 99d
It's gone to shit since Bing jacked up the price of API calls
FallenWalnut@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 99d
Sorry, it was in the post body. Will update post to make this clearer.
mrnngglry@sh.itjust.works · 28 pts · 99d
SearXNG. I will never understand why it doesn’t get used more. It is so easy to set up.
eldavi@lemmy.ml · 9 pts · 99d
are you aware of any instances that have lasted longer than a few months?
mrnngglry@sh.itjust.works · 12 pts · 99d
I have it set up on my own home server. Before that, I had it set up on individual PCs. It's super easy. I guess you mean public instances. I've never used one because it is so easy to set up for yourself.
mrcleanup@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 99d
searx.garudalinux.org
Axolotl_cpp@feddit.it · 3 pts · 98d
https://search.rhscz.eu/ or check https://fmhy.net/storage#searx-instances
eldavi@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 79d
exactly what i needed; thank you!
littleomid@feddit.org · 1 pts · 99d
Is that such an issue? If so, I could set up an open instance.
Axolotl_cpp@feddit.it · 3 pts · 98d
Nah, it isn't, there is a whole instances list and there are always the same instance, often some new ones pop up but that's it, there are also some great instances not in the list
MalReynolds@slrpnk.net · 1 pts · 98d
Yup, easy peasy. And if you really want AI deep research, how about plugging it into your own local LLM with Vane
TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com · 18 pts · 98d
google being useful for search has been over for at least a decade
adam_y@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 98d
T00l_shed@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 98d
I'm using ddg, I used to have trouble finding stuff, and occasionally used Google in the beginning, but I've not had to Google something in over a year now
hansolo@lemmy.today · 16 pts · 98d
Ecosia
Startpage
DDG
Qwant
Brave Search
Even Yandex actually doesnt suck, if you're cool to use it.
Anyone still using Google needs to be in a home.
chmod755@feddit.org · 2 pts · 97d
I am using Qwant and Ecosia
M33@piefed.world · 15 pts · 98d
Ecosia.org ⬆️
hogmomma@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 98d
Cool concept; really, REALLY dumb name.
bss03@infosec.pub · 2 pts · 97d
Eco-seer isn't really that bad, and "misspelling" the company name is almost mandatory.
isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 98d
Is a deliberate misspelling of googol any better for a company name?
snooggums@piefed.world · 13 pts · 99d
If I wanted a conversation I wouldn't be using a search engine to get answers.
sturmblast@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 98d
Yay, worse search
osanna@lemmy.vg · 6 pts · 98d
Just when you thought it couldn’t get even worse…. Google disappoints yet again. Maybe this will be the push people need to start using alts
hot_mocha_decaf@lemmy.cafe · 11 pts · 99d
I haven't used Google search since 2008, when I starting using Linux and Duckduckgo was the default search engine for Firefox.
Allero@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 98d
Oh, how Firefox changed...
Scrollone@feddit.it · 11 pts · 98d
Firefox always used Google as their default search engine, since Google pays a lot of money for that privilege.
Edit: some Linux distros used to change that default while they were shipping a non-branded fork of Firefox.
underThunder@thelemmy.club · 11 pts · 99d
willington@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 13 pts · 99d
Capitalism sucks:
TheLastOfHisName@piefed.social · 11 pts · 99d
Photonic@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 99d
What makes it worth it to you over something like Ecosia?
Also, I’m on the fence about startpage. They were Dutch but were bought by an American advertising company.
Scrollone@feddit.it · 4 pts · 98d
Qwant is French and they've been partnering with Ecosia to build a European index.
Foreigner@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 98d
I've used both Ecosia and Kagi and find the former gives me too many irrelevant results compared to Kagi. Recently though Kagi has been giving me some funky results but it doesn't happen very often.
tb_@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 99d
I do not like the vibes of Startpage's owner, System1.
If you're using Startpage because it uses google on the back-end, Ecosia does much the same nowadays (you can toggle between that and bing).
ObsidianZed@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 99d
Too much AI with Kagi.
Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de · 11 pts · 99d
I degoogled as a Covid project. Mostly it just made me feel a little bit better... and then GenAI hit. Hopefully I'll go my whole life without ever having used Gemini. And hopefully, if they ingested any of my pre-pandemic emails, photos, docs, etc to train with, pulling it out of cold storage will at least have cost them extra time and money.
abbadon420@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 99d
Eu-first index, you say? I might wanna check that out!
jenings@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 98d
Been a kagi subscriber for about a year now. Right when they wer implementing ai overview. It’s been a very refreshing way to internet
HubertManne@piefed.social · 5 pts · 98d
is that as profitable as search?
fodor@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 98d
Hettyc_Tracyn@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 99d
I use Vivaldi with Startpage instead of Chrome, etc; because I hate getting the AI results that are wrong half the time because they pull off of what some idiot on Reddit said (or just hallucinate)
Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 98d
Is searching with -AI not going to work?
chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 98d
They're getting rid of search entirely and making everything AI summaries. It's literally just AI responses and nothing else.
fodor@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 98d
YeahToast@aussie.zone · 2 pts · 97d
I've had times where it refuses to search with the -ai flag.
winkerjadams@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -1 pts · 98d
4get.ca
Bo7a@piefed.ca · 8 pts · 98d
Yeah I don't think that one will go over well with the current wording on their FAQ.
Rekorse@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 98d
Sounds like a straight shooter to me. What's not to like?
Bo7a@piefed.ca · 3 pts · 98d
'globohomo bullshit' doesn't strike you as a red flag?
Maybe they are trying to 'take back' a bigoted term, but I don't get that feeling. Especially since the vast majority of people using that term are shithead chuds.
Rekorse@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 98d
I sort of missed that one. Sort of makes the post odd.
winkerjadams@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 96d
I never saw that and I use an instance of it hosted by other people but yea its not a good look for sure