I'm pretty sure net neutrality was what prevented internet platforms/providers/protocols/etc. from artificially favoring some content over others, until it was repealed.
Net neutrality is more about the physical network, e.g. your ISP can't make google requests go fast and bing ones go slow, or not count google requests against your data cap (if you have one)
Yesterday, as the goog search-results-page was taking 4-5 seconds to generate the AI-guff at top, it made all the site-links unclickable until AI summary was done. đźš˝
Louis Rossmann already talked about how if he generates his website content with ai, or post-processes it with ai, it scores #1 in results consistently, whereas THE SAME information written in a human way, scores down in the hundreds.
I honestly thought it was already doing this. Whenever I accidentally use Google on my phone, it gives me the ai result that I have to exit out of, before I can see the results list.
Maybe it wasn’t that way for desktop?
Either way, I am trying to avoid Google and microslop as much as I can. I’m slowly removing them from my life, piece my piece.
Email is my next challenge. I really hoped self-hosting it would be easier by now.
The company offers a useful service, often for free or at a reasonable price.
Once it's gained enough users, the company cuts corners to save costs, and abuses the users to sell their information, attention, work, and / or time to business customers, like advertisers, and might start charging for the once free service, or increase costs. This significantly degrades the quality, usefulness, and usability of the service, but by this point the users probably have no alternative, or most other alternatives are doing the same.
Once it's gained enough business customers and cornered the market, it starts cutting corners, degrading the service, and increasing costs for these customers, who, again, by this point have no viable alternative.
Once the degradation and cost increase have reached the level beyond which even the captive users and customers would start leaving in significant numbers, the corporation extracts as much money as possible from its investors and stockholders, for instance “investing” in datacentres that won't ever be built while distracting them with shiny but useless “innovations” like AI.
The CEO runs away with the money, possibly including a bailout, and the company dies, leaving the investors and stockholders with the debt, the users without a service, the customers without a product, and society poorer than before point 1.
Google is currently at stage 4, having abused both users and customers to the point that many are leaving, and burning money as fast as possible to enrich the top brass and try to look like a company worth investing in.
It won't be long before it implodes, but it'll still be too long.
That's true, but only juuuuust enough to keep the advertisers paying. There is no incentive for a monopoly like Google to provide better service for their customers (their customers are the advertisers) than the bare minimum, since they have no meaningful competition.
And if you try to use the AI search to actually find any actual websites or articles it will just hallucinate them. They kept telling us AI was the future of search, but we know they want it to be the future of information.
Its just that they can't afford to not be. You leaving for another site is heresy with how much money they need to make on selling ads and you.
And the middle man has decided they have overheard enough of the conversation going both ways to just "know" what you are about to ask and what the answer should be.
This is the new market for them. Not being a search algorithm but being a magical information hoarder that can predict everything about their user and their brand partners.
The problem isn't that AI is dogshit. In fact there are many things that have been revolutionized because of AI. Our understanding of biology has catapulted forward decades because of new models.
The problem is marketing. Those few use cases, while truely amazing, are only useful for a few things. The marketing of AI is horrible, throwing it into every product whether it makes sense or not. Throwing more money at it when it doesn't make sense in the vain hopes that will eventually make it profitable. Then manipulating the market so that alternatives to your bad product aren't feasible.
These silicon valley narcissists need AI to be profitable more than AI can become profitable.
A big part of the problem is that everything is AI and AI is everything. Machine learning, LLMs, and "AI companies" are three very different concepts that get muddled together by newspeak.
Many machine learning applications are indeed truly innovative and a leap forward in how we deal with certain classes of problems, like in computer vision or computational biology as you mentioned. But the big trouble with LLMs imo is twofold: they are kryptonite for our monkey brains as language is something so uniquely human that it is a literal backdoor into our minds; and as a whole they are both affected and effected by the forced enshittification of capitalism, whether directly or indirectly, and the interests of "others", leading to some not great times.
Perhaps. My issue is more with the muddy waters when it comes to "AI". It might be because it's near to my profession, and I frequently encounter a fervent, yet clueless enthusiasm. When that same lack of specificity is used to argue for what they don't really understand either, for example:
The problem isn’t that AI is dogshit. In fact there are many things that have been revolutionized because of AI. Our understanding of biology has catapulted forward decades because of new models.
It does beg the question if they understand what they are talking about. "AI is dogshit", is weird. Are we talking about LLMs here? They are great for a lot of things. They are pretty horrible at doing what most seem to think they are great at, but that's perhaps a different matter.
Then there is the "Our understanding of biology has catapulted forward decades because of new models". If we are generalizing "AI models" to include the ones that have contributed to biology, we end up with a definition of "AI" that becomes "model based computational solution optimization".
I agree with you. I'm working on a novel, and it's been really helpful for preliminary editing advice, and bouncing ideas off of. Not perfect, but it's better than no one. And I really don't understand why it's not marketed more as a collaborative assistant, rather than something that just does mediocre work for you.
I'm nearly done with book it suggested as research, and i don't think it could have been a better subject. It's a great pick for what I needed.
But compared to ChatGTP, Gemini is fucking retarded.
Self-host SearXNG on your laptop/PC. Your only regret is that you'd wish you'd done this sooner. Both SearXNG and Docker have helpful setup pages that walk you through the process. https://docs.searxng.org/
I should have been more accurate. It’s not a search engine per se. It’s a search aggregator. It doesn’t crawl the net, just uses other search engines
my job requires me to use AI as a KPI. Now, I don't have to look for answers on google anymore while I'm at work. I'll just regurgitate the AI answer.
when I'm at home I'll use DDG and actually spend time and effort on solutions.
this is an absolute win. work gets zero effort, and I spend my time on more important things like not giving a fuck if capitalism rots from the inside ouy due to AI.
Better I propose AI usage for other teams. Now people requesting work from IT have to convince a chatbot their demands are usefull and then fill a jira which is checked by a chatbpt too before having access to a human. What problems can this bring ? I wonder.
I noticed that dictionary definitions on Google are now AI-generated, whereas they used to be taken from the Oxford English Dictionary, written by humans. Needless to say I much preferred the human-written definitions.
Geez, a person would have to think for like 2, maybe even 5 seconds to forsee how this plays out. Instead of buying apples from the orchard, we'll be buying apples from the local apple thieves. Hey, why are there no more apples?
"We, Google, who produce an AI, are now prioritizing AI content in our search engine, in a totally unrelated decision to our AI production, so that we can totally not artificially inflate the imaginary value of AI so as to force more people to use our AI to create content, so it will show in our search engine we've gone to lengths to skew results in the favor of AI in to give you the best service imaginable (because its imaginary to think we provide the best of anything)"
I really wish we'd get another president into the office thats willing to take a massive hammer to these big companies and bust them up into shards again.. preferably this time making sure they cant T2000 themselves back together into the original whole, thats somehow worse.
I wonder how long before they disable the Web Search option (udm=14). I still use that as my default search engine wherever possible, because I find it more reliable than Duck Duck Go for the things I tend to search for. Unfortunately, I can see Google killing it to funnel more people towards the slop trough.
Serious question: can anyone vouch for a search engine today that prioritises… searching? and does it well?
I used DuckDuckGo for a couple of years, but I’d found the result set frequently lacking compared to Google. I’m currently on Brave search (+ Brave Browser), and it’s good for text, but it does shove an LLM response at the top and is pretty bad for image results.
SearXNG is a local option and is fairly easy to get a container running for it.
It's not the cleanest, but it will let you search about anything that is searchable if you allow it. (It'll aggregate results from ~244 different search engines so beware. It's a "metasearch" engine.)
It can be a bit slow at times (especially if all the things are turned on), and is a bit like Google in its infancy. However, there aren't ads or promoted results. It's fairly raw, if you are into that kinda thing.
Getting the API working with Python can be a pain at times due to its bot control mechanisms and strict header checks. (I believe they default these features ON if someone accidentally makes their instance public or something like that.)
I'm pretty happy with Kagi which does search, including images (and a personal favorite, GIFs), well. It's meta-search so they capitalize on other indexes.
I too never had luck with DDG - I like their general privacy ethos, but their search sucks. They've gotten a little better as they've shifted away from being 100% Bing, but only baby steps so far.
Brave is much better search, but hate their crypto-bro company ethos. Image search is meh.
Self hosted meta-search options (SearXNG, Whoogle) are good but difficult to set up well.
Kagi, Brave, and DDG all let you disable AI responses in settings. If you're otherwise alright with Brave just turn AI results off (does require you to let them keep a cookie).
"Search" engines will always prioritize their revenue source. If you want a search engine that prioritizes search, you need to DIY or find someone whose revenue source is search, not data/ads.
To my knowledge the only engine getting their income from search is Kagi.
Same, I find it to be fine. I've contracted my use of the internet smaller and smaller as it gradually enshitifies so I'm not searching for non specific things that often any more, just looking up the local plumber or whatever.
Ironfox with consentomatic and ublock and I feel pretty pleased with my simple internet!
Over the last few years I've found ddg results work better. To be clear, I don't know that ddg has actually gotten better. But Google's quality has just nose dived to the point it's better.
I'm also trying kagi. It feels so different I'm not hooked yet. But the layout is just different enough it's a bit jarring to skim after decades of training on Google's results.
I'm hopeful though because I hear other people talking about it a good bit. At this point, I don't know if there's another model to trust either.
The way the implemented it feels like the dev tev team did not want to do it, but marketing had to have it on their feature list because all the other sites also added AI and they did not want to look like they missed the hype train.
Once upon a time I was opposed to the idea of a "link tax". These days, at least in the context of websites getting summarized by AI before any traffic can reach them, I'm much more into the idea.
I've been degoogling for the last year or two. Moved away from Gmail, Google Voice, Chrome, Android, et cetera.
Still been using the search, because as much as it's starting to suck, its results have still been comparatively better than the others I've tried(although recently I've tried Brave Search and DuckDuckGo).
But man, Google is fighting REALLY hard to lose me.
114 Comments
violentfart@lemmy.world · 155 pts · 75d
Further erasing the source of truth so it can be rewritten by the highest bidder.
pelespirit@sh.itjust.works · 85 pts · 75d
The co-founders of google that are still on the board, did business with epstein.
N0t_5ure@lemmy.world · 36 pts · 75d
"Don't be evil. Lol.
Gumus@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 75d
Krauerking@lemy.lol · 15 pts · 74d
Its definitely ironic to see this with the AI watermark
Gumus@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 73d
Thanks!
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz · 62 pts · 75d
I want to downvote this so bad but I know that's not the point of downvotes...
victorz@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 75d
I too sometimes wish it would be possible to boo stuff that gets published in digital media. 🫨 Some stuff is just too triggering.
StellarSt0rm@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 75d
We need a post upvote/downvote for the quality of the post and media upvote/downvote to say how much we hate or love the content.
victorz@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 75d
Reactions, like on Piefed. Pretty nifty.
redlemace@lemmy.world · 58 pts · 75d
you're gonna use AI whether you like it or not ..... oh wait, I left google search long ago
blazeknave@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 75d
Kagi. You?
ViscloReader@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 75d
Ddg
AbKingPro@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 74d
Is the 5$ monthly sub enough? Currently using the 100 query trial and I like the result but not sure about the value proposition
blazeknave@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 73d
I did the 2 person one and it's totally worth it.
underThunder@thelemmy.club · 50 pts · 75d
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz · 29 pts · 75d
Welcome to the internet post-NetNeutrality
4am@lemmy.zip · 9 pts · 75d
Is this a problem that net neutrality would have solved?
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz · 20 pts · 75d
I'm pretty sure net neutrality was what prevented internet platforms/providers/protocols/etc. from artificially favoring some content over others, until it was repealed.
stormdelay@sh.itjust.works · 23 pts · 75d
Net neutrality is more about the physical network, e.g. your ISP can't make google requests go fast and bing ones go slow, or not count google requests against your data cap (if you have one)
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz · 12 pts · 75d
Oh, I see. Thanks for the clarification.
It should still be reinstated though.
Etterra@discuss.online · 44 pts · 75d
Hey another reason to stop using Google's enshittified search engine.
osanna@lemmy.vg · 17 pts · 75d
It’s not even a search engine anymore. It’s just another stream of ad revenue for them. They’re an advertising company, NOT a search company.
victorz@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 75d
Glad I stopped years ago. F—k big tech.
ace_garp@lemmy.world · 42 pts · 75d
Yesterday, as the goog search-results-page was taking 4-5 seconds to generate the AI-guff at top, it made all the site-links unclickable until AI summary was done. đźš˝
(Disclaimer: Was on a random PC)
Egriaga@lemmy.ml · 40 pts · 74d
gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 19 pts · 74d
NoAI.duckduckgo.com is even better
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 74d
vanilla duckduck has embedded ai as well
Omen777@lemmy.ml · -1 pts · 74d
Uh I thought that DuckDuckGo was an unpopular opinion
Egriaga@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 74d
What doth thy mean
luciferofastora@feddit.org · 3 pts · 72d
*dost thou
"doth thy" would be equivalent to "does your"
87Six@lemmy.zip · 28 pts · 74d
Louis Rossmann already talked about how if he generates his website content with ai, or post-processes it with ai, it scores #1 in results consistently, whereas THE SAME information written in a human way, scores down in the hundreds.
They already did it.
Saledovil@sh.itjust.works · 28 pts · 75d
If AI really were that good, it would have naturally displaced human written answers by now.
reluctant_squidd@lemmy.ca · 27 pts · 75d
I honestly thought it was already doing this. Whenever I accidentally use Google on my phone, it gives me the ai result that I have to exit out of, before I can see the results list.
Maybe it wasn’t that way for desktop?
Either way, I am trying to avoid Google and microslop as much as I can. I’m slowly removing them from my life, piece my piece.
Email is my next challenge. I really hoped self-hosting it would be easier by now.
const_void@lemmy.ml · 6 pts · 75d
Change the default search engine to Duck Duck Go.
bedwyr@piefed.ca · 2 pts · 75d
Tuta works. For email, it's free, and encrypted, and outside the United states.
floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 26 pts · 74d
Yay, more model collapse for everybody!
OrteilGenou@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 74d
Is it right if we're not sure if it's wrong?
VaalaVasaVarde@sopuli.xyz · 24 pts · 75d
They really know how to please their customers (the advertisers).
Kirk@startrek.website · 14 pts · 75d
Actually, the advertisers lose too, this is just a way to get people to search more than once so advertisers dollars don't go as far.
Sibshops@lemmy.myserv.one · 11 pts · 75d
Doubt it, the AI will direct people directly to the advertisers.
leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 12 pts · 75d
There are multiple stages of enshittification:
Google is currently at stage 4, having abused both users and customers to the point that many are leaving, and burning money as fast as possible to enrich the top brass and try to look like a company worth investing in.
It won't be long before it implodes, but it'll still be too long.
Kirk@startrek.website · 5 pts · 75d
That's true, but only juuuuust enough to keep the advertisers paying. There is no incentive for a monopoly like Google to provide better service for their customers (their customers are the advertisers) than the bare minimum, since they have no meaningful competition.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world · 24 pts · 75d
Anyone got a more burnt or withered version of this?
bitjunkie@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 74d
1 sec let me take a selfie
pivot_root@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 75d
Any old photo of soot dust will do.
PartyAt15thAndSummit@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 74d
hobovision@mander.xyz · 23 pts · 75d
And if you try to use the AI search to actually find any actual websites or articles it will just hallucinate them. They kept telling us AI was the future of search, but we know they want it to be the future of information.
Krauerking@lemy.lol · 8 pts · 74d
Its just that they can't afford to not be. You leaving for another site is heresy with how much money they need to make on selling ads and you.
And the middle man has decided they have overheard enough of the conversation going both ways to just "know" what you are about to ask and what the answer should be.
This is the new market for them. Not being a search algorithm but being a magical information hoarder that can predict everything about their user and their brand partners.
They want to be Madame Leota
its_kim_love@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 20 pts · 74d
I love that Google has convinced themselves they can be a massive advertisement company without the mechanism that got us to look at the ads.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 74d
They've got a whole lot more avenues to shove ads down people's throats now than when they started, though.
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 74d
Are there any plans to release an AI that's not dogshit?
InputZero@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 74d
The problem isn't that AI is dogshit. In fact there are many things that have been revolutionized because of AI. Our understanding of biology has catapulted forward decades because of new models.
The problem is marketing. Those few use cases, while truely amazing, are only useful for a few things. The marketing of AI is horrible, throwing it into every product whether it makes sense or not. Throwing more money at it when it doesn't make sense in the vain hopes that will eventually make it profitable. Then manipulating the market so that alternatives to your bad product aren't feasible.
These silicon valley narcissists need AI to be profitable more than AI can become profitable.
floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 12 pts · 74d
A big part of the problem is that everything is AI and AI is everything. Machine learning, LLMs, and "AI companies" are three very different concepts that get muddled together by newspeak.
Many machine learning applications are indeed truly innovative and a leap forward in how we deal with certain classes of problems, like in computer vision or computational biology as you mentioned. But the big trouble with LLMs imo is twofold: they are kryptonite for our monkey brains as language is something so uniquely human that it is a literal backdoor into our minds; and as a whole they are both affected and effected by the forced enshittification of capitalism, whether directly or indirectly, and the interests of "others", leading to some not great times.
okamiueru@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 74d
AlphaFold is not an LLM tho
Stern@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 74d
I think homey is using a more expanded AI definition then the "Looks inside: It's a LLM" one that is generally used today.
okamiueru@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 74d
Perhaps. My issue is more with the muddy waters when it comes to "AI". It might be because it's near to my profession, and I frequently encounter a fervent, yet clueless enthusiasm. When that same lack of specificity is used to argue for what they don't really understand either, for example:
It does beg the question if they understand what they are talking about. "AI is dogshit", is weird. Are we talking about LLMs here? They are great for a lot of things. They are pretty horrible at doing what most seem to think they are great at, but that's perhaps a different matter.
Then there is the "Our understanding of biology has catapulted forward decades because of new models". If we are generalizing "AI models" to include the ones that have contributed to biology, we end up with a definition of "AI" that becomes "model based computational solution optimization".
Jankatarch@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 74d
Chatbots are a different type of AI entirely tho.
queermunist@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 74d
Or in other words, the problem is that AI is dogshit outside the very small range of tasks that it's good at.
InputZero@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 74d
Yes.
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 74d
I agree with you. I'm working on a novel, and it's been really helpful for preliminary editing advice, and bouncing ideas off of. Not perfect, but it's better than no one. And I really don't understand why it's not marketed more as a collaborative assistant, rather than something that just does mediocre work for you.
I'm nearly done with book it suggested as research, and i don't think it could have been a better subject. It's a great pick for what I needed.
But compared to ChatGTP, Gemini is fucking retarded.
bruzzard@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 75d
Self-host SearXNG on your laptop/PC. Your only regret is that you'd wish you'd done this sooner. Both SearXNG and Docker have helpful setup pages that walk you through the process. https://docs.searxng.org/
osanna@lemmy.vg · 12 pts · 75d
I’ve been hosting searx(ng) for like a decade or more. Rarely does it not find what I’m looking for.
Omen777@lemmy.ml · 8 pts · 75d
Me and my dad have been using DuckDuckGo for a while
batmaniam@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 74d
Can you give me a top level description? Is this really a self hosted search engine?? Like how dependant is this on other indexes somewhere?
osanna@lemmy.vg · 6 pts · 74d
I should have been more accurate. It’s not a search engine per se. It’s a search aggregator. It doesn’t crawl the net, just uses other search engines
batmaniam@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 73d
That's still pretty damn cool. Got dang it... another project for the pile...
Thanks :)
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 75d
https://noai.duckduckgo.com/
bitjunkie@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 74d
DDG's non-AI search is still just Google from 10 years ago, which already fucking sucked
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 74d
so dont use it.
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 75d
hear me out.
my job requires me to use AI as a KPI. Now, I don't have to look for answers on google anymore while I'm at work. I'll just regurgitate the AI answer.
when I'm at home I'll use DDG and actually spend time and effort on solutions.
this is an absolute win. work gets zero effort, and I spend my time on more important things like not giving a fuck if capitalism rots from the inside ouy due to AI.
Diurnambule@jlai.lu · 10 pts · 75d
Better I propose AI usage for other teams. Now people requesting work from IT have to convince a chatbot their demands are usefull and then fill a jira which is checked by a chatbpt too before having access to a human. What problems can this bring ? I wonder.
bitjunkie@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 74d
How many shares of the company do you personally own? Because that's how many fucks you should give.
Diurnambule@jlai.lu · 4 pts · 74d
Ho, I think I give exactly the right amount of fuck.
moderatecentrist@feddit.uk · 15 pts · 74d
I noticed that dictionary definitions on Google are now AI-generated, whereas they used to be taken from the Oxford English Dictionary, written by humans. Needless to say I much preferred the human-written definitions.
T00l_shed@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 74d
What? You don't like the fever dreams of the planet killing machines?
Folstar@lemmus.org · 15 pts · 74d
Geez, a person would have to think for like 2, maybe even 5 seconds to forsee how this plays out. Instead of buying apples from the orchard, we'll be buying apples from the local apple thieves. Hey, why are there no more apples?
RobertoOberto@sh.itjust.works · 13 pts · 75d
I wouldn't be so frustrated with AI popping up everywhere if we were given clear choices about whether or not we want to use it.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 74d
"We, Google, who produce an AI, are now prioritizing AI content in our search engine, in a totally unrelated decision to our AI production, so that we can totally not artificially inflate the imaginary value of AI so as to force more people to use our AI to create content, so it will show in our search engine we've gone to lengths to skew results in the favor of AI in to give you the best service imaginable (because its imaginary to think we provide the best of anything)"
I really wish we'd get another president into the office thats willing to take a massive hammer to these big companies and bust them up into shards again.. preferably this time making sure they cant T2000 themselves back together into the original whole, thats somehow worse.
BenVimes@lemmy.ca · 10 pts · 75d
I wonder how long before they disable the Web Search option (udm=14). I still use that as my default search engine wherever possible, because I find it more reliable than Duck Duck Go for the things I tend to search for. Unfortunately, I can see Google killing it to funnel more people towards the slop trough.
stoly@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 75d
What’s that do?
lichtmetzger@discuss.tchncs.de · 4 pts · 75d
It's basically an older version of the website, without the AI features.
stoly@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 74d
so I append ?udm=14 at the end of the URL?
Mr_Wobble@thelemmy.club · 3 pts · 74d
Correct! Like so: https://www.google.com/search?q=wankel+rotary+engine&udm=14
There are also browser extensions that do it automatically.
stoly@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 74d
Thanks!
Mr_Wobble@thelemmy.club · 2 pts · 74d
You're welcome :)
Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 9 pts · 74d
Good thing i dont use google anymore
TheMuffinMan@piefed.world · 9 pts · 75d
Serious question: can anyone vouch for a search engine today that prioritises… searching? and does it well?
I used DuckDuckGo for a couple of years, but I’d found the result set frequently lacking compared to Google. I’m currently on Brave search (+ Brave Browser), and it’s good for text, but it does shove an LLM response at the top and is pretty bad for image results.
remotelove@lemmy.ca · 11 pts · 75d
SearXNG is a local option and is fairly easy to get a container running for it.
It's not the cleanest, but it will let you search about anything that is searchable if you allow it. (It'll aggregate results from ~244 different search engines so beware. It's a "metasearch" engine.)
It can be a bit slow at times (especially if all the things are turned on), and is a bit like Google in its infancy. However, there aren't ads or promoted results. It's fairly raw, if you are into that kinda thing.
Getting the API working with Python can be a pain at times due to its bot control mechanisms and strict header checks. (I believe they default these features ON if someone accidentally makes their instance public or something like that.)
zurohki@aussie.zone · 9 pts · 75d
As a paid search engine, Kagi actually prioritises doing what users want.
Want AI? It's available. Don't want AI? Turn it off and you'll never see it again.
Ludicrous0251@piefed.zip · 8 pts · 75d
I'm pretty happy with Kagi which does search, including images (and a personal favorite, GIFs), well. It's meta-search so they capitalize on other indexes.
I too never had luck with DDG - I like their general privacy ethos, but their search sucks. They've gotten a little better as they've shifted away from being 100% Bing, but only baby steps so far.
Brave is much better search, but hate their crypto-bro company ethos. Image search is meh.
Self hosted meta-search options (SearXNG, Whoogle) are good but difficult to set up well.
Kagi, Brave, and DDG all let you disable AI responses in settings. If you're otherwise alright with Brave just turn AI results off (does require you to let them keep a cookie).
"Search" engines will always prioritize their revenue source. If you want a search engine that prioritizes search, you need to DIY or find someone whose revenue source is search, not data/ads.
To my knowledge the only engine getting their income from search is Kagi.
godsammitdam@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 75d
Kagi is one of the better options. It's a subscription, private, and closed source.
SearXNG is an open source search aggregator that you can set up yourself and self host.
Both are on par in my opinion in getting relevant search results, far better than the mainstream engines for sure.
Make your choice wisely.
Captainautism@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 75d
Kagi, it’s like the old Google..before the enshittification.
whalebiologist@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 75d
TIN@feddit.uk · 4 pts · 75d
Same, I find it to be fine. I've contracted my use of the internet smaller and smaller as it gradually enshitifies so I'm not searching for non specific things that often any more, just looking up the local plumber or whatever.
Ironfox with consentomatic and ublock and I feel pretty pleased with my simple internet!
neclimdul@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 75d
Over the last few years I've found ddg results work better. To be clear, I don't know that ddg has actually gotten better. But Google's quality has just nose dived to the point it's better.
I'm also trying kagi. It feels so different I'm not hooked yet. But the layout is just different enough it's a bit jarring to skim after decades of training on Google's results.
I'm hopeful though because I hear other people talking about it a good bit. At this point, I don't know if there's another model to trust either.
Atlas48@ttrpg.network · 9 pts · 75d
surely this won't bite them in the ass.
MehBlah@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 75d
A huge shit sandwich fantasy sold as reality.
Malyca@lemmy.zip · 8 pts · 75d
Duck duck and go mother fucker
FinalRemix@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 75d
Their search sucks but you're right.
GenosseFlosse@feddit.org · 6 pts · 75d
Sucks less than Google, has no ai, allows me to block certain domains from showing up...
Rozauhtuno@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 5 pts · 75d
They have ai, but you can turn it off.
GenosseFlosse@feddit.org · 7 pts · 75d
The way the implemented it feels like the dev tev team did not want to do it, but marketing had to have it on their feature list because all the other sites also added AI and they did not want to look like they missed the hype train.
Fizz@lemmy.nz · 1 pts · 74d
Their search is so good. The only thing it sucks for us local result and I hate apple maps
stumu415@lemmy.zip · 8 pts · 74d
Who still uses Google as a self respecting techie?
melsaskca@lemmy.ca · 8 pts · 74d
Dammit. Now I have to spend more time at the library. Thankfully it ain't too far away.
buddascrayon@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 74d
I guess it's a good damn thing I don't use Google anymore.
Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 75d
Once upon a time I was opposed to the idea of a "link tax". These days, at least in the context of websites getting summarized by AI before any traffic can reach them, I'm much more into the idea.
Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 74d
They went from "indexing the world's information" to "plagiarizing and supplanting the world's information."
judgyweevil@feddit.it · 3 pts · 75d
Isn't it already the case
obvs@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 75d
I've been degoogling for the last year or two. Moved away from Gmail, Google Voice, Chrome, Android, et cetera.
Still been using the search, because as much as it's starting to suck, its results have still been comparatively better than the others I've tried(although recently I've tried Brave Search and DuckDuckGo).
But man, Google is fighting REALLY hard to lose me.
godsammitdam@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 75d
Set up your SearXNG instances if you haven't yet.
Gullible@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 75d
Dang. Sucks to be one of the idiots still supporting that website
the_wizard_of_0Z@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 75d
One I scrape... 2 if I have to use regular shit I always move to the 2nd page. Fuck all chatgipity.
bruzzard@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 74d
Curious: What made you do it for a decade if it wasn't working so well for you.
Not being snarky here. Just would like to understand what kept you on.
phoenixz@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 74d
Lol