Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 609 posts

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#21

Post by giantg2 »

jrvarela56 wrote: post #15
neilsimp1 wrote: post #12

Yes, DDG for 95% of issues. Using an AI to search seems really, really, really dumb to me.

I’d say come back in a few years for a bad take. But this is already a bad take. A query in a regular search engine can at best perform like an LLM-based provider like Perplexity for simple queries. If you have to click or browse several results forget it, makes no sense not to use an LLM that provides sources.

I like to see multiple ideas or opinions on a subject. LLMs seem to distill the knowledge and opinions in ways that are more winner-take-all, or at most only the top few samples. Even if you prompt for a deeper sampling it seems it seems the quality drops (like resolution reduces for each) and its still based on popularity vs merits for some types of data.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#22

Post by footy »

I use Kagi and sometimes DDG. When I do a search I'd rather do my own reading than be lied to. It's not even like using it for code, when you can quickly iterate if needed-there is no way to verify the information you got is correct and that is a major problem imo.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#23

Post by okayokayokay123 »

Switched over to DuckDuckGo a month ago. Results aren’t always great but it works 90% of the time.

I use perplexity pro + Claude a lot as well. Maybe too much but mostly for coding and conversations about technical topics.

It really depends on intent.

I have noticed that I’ve started reading a lot more. Lots of technical books in the iPad based on what I’m interested in at the moment.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#24

Post by subsection1h »

jrvarela56 wrote: post #15
neilsimp1 wrote: post #12

Yes, DDG for 95% of issues. Using an AI to search seems really, really, really dumb to me.

I’d say come back in a few years for a bad take. But this is already a bad take. A query in a regular search engine can at best perform like an LLM-based provider like Perplexity for simple queries. If you have to click or browse several results forget it, makes no sense not to use an LLM that provides sources.

> If you have to click or browse several results forget it, makes no sense not to use an LLM that provides sources.

I just searched for "What is inherit_errexit?" at Perplexity. Eight sources were provided and none of them were the most authoritative source, which is this page in the Bash manual:

https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/The-Shopt...

Whereas, when I searched for "inherit_errexit" using Google Search, the above page was the sixth result. And when I searched for "inherit_errexit" using DuckDuckGo, the above page was the third result.

I continue to believe that LLMs are favored by people who don't care about developing an understanding of subjects based on the most authoritative source material. These are people who don't read science journals, they don't read technical specifications, they don't read man pages, and they don't read a program's source code before installing the program. These are people who prioritize convenience above all else.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#26

Post by sitkack »

guillaume8375 wrote: post #2

I’m a Kagi subscriber; I like it but I use it less and less. The more times goes by, the more I use both ChatGPT and Claude to search (at the same time, to cross-check the results) with Kagi used to either check the results when I know strictly nothing of the subject or for specific searches (restaurants, movie showings…). I’ve almost completely stopped using Google.

A question mark after a search on Kagi gives you an AI summary, the latency is good.

If you go for the highest tier subscription on kagi, you get https://kagi.com/assistant which gives you a huge swath of AI models to handle your searching.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#27

Post by RattlesnakeJake »

I use DuckDuckGo, with the occasional reddit !g appended if I'm looking for something experience-based.

For me, searches fall into one of three categories, none of which are a good fit for LLMs:

1. A single business, location, object, or concept (I really just want the Google Maps or Wikipedia page, and I'm too lazy to go straight to the site). For these queries, LLMs are either overkill or outdated.

2. Product reviews, setup instructions, and other real-world blog posts. LLMs want to summarize these, and I don't want that.

3. Really specific knowledge in a limited domain ("2017 Kia Sedona automatic sliding door motor replacement steps," "Can I exit a Queue-Triggered Azure Function without removing it from the queue?"). In these cases, the LLMs are so prone to hallucination that I can't trust them.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#29

Post by jpc0 »

100% still search first. If I am not super knowledge on the domain I am searching for I use an AI to get me keywords and terminology and then search.

At most I use AI now to speed up my research phase dramatically. AI is also pretty good at showing what is in the ballpark for more popular tools.

However I am missing forum style communities more and more, sometimes I don't want the correct answer, I want to know what someone that has been in the trenches for 10 years has to say, for my day job I can just make a phone call but for hobbies, side projects etc I don't have the contacts built up and I don't always have local interest groups that I can tap for knowledge.

Post reply on HN