I mainly use search engines indirectly via Copilot (the app). It uses Bing in the background to give current results, so I can ask it about what happened yesterday.
Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
41–50 of 609 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#42No, I go straight to GPT. Because I’m not usually searching for a webpage. What I’m really looking for is to learn through the course of an interactive discussion. Where I can ask any question no matter how stupid it is. Imagine a patient elderly colleague who will never lose their temper or mock you. Sometimes they get things wrong, but that’s where critical thinking comes in.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#43Yes, DDG for 95% of issues. Using an AI to search seems really, really, really dumb to me.
That’s a perfectly fine answer, but providing no supporting arguments makes this a very difficult conversation.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#44I'll use Claude about 75% of the time, and then a search engine about 25% of the time. That 25% of the time, I'm usually looking for:
- Specific documentation
- Datasets
- Shopping items
- Product reviews
But for the search engines I use, their branded LLM response takes up half of the first page. So that 25% figure may actually be a lot smaller.
It's important to note that these search engine LLM responses are often ludicrously incorrect -- at least, in my experience. So now I'm in this weird phase where I visit Google and debate whether I need to enter search terms or some prompt engineering in the search box.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#45No, I go straight to GPT. Because I’m not usually searching for a webpage. What I’m really looking for is to learn through the course of an interactive discussion. Where I can ask any question no matter how stupid it is. Imagine a patient elderly colleague who will never lose their temper or mock you. Sometimes they get things wrong, but that’s where critical thinking comes in.
I thought of one more thing I want to add. GPT listens to you. It makes you feel heard. Let’s say I ask a question but I have a strong bias. For example, what if I said “JavaScript is stupid, why can’t we go back to using Java Server Pages?”
Instead of clowning me or making me feel invalidated it would present an argument that covers both sides and would probably start with “JSPs have certain advantages, and I understand why you would feel that way. Here is a list of pros and cons…”
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#46I still prefer tranditional search engines over LLMs but I admit, its results feels worse than it has traditionally. I don't like LLMs for two reasons: * I can't really get a feel for the veracity of the information without double checking it. A lot of context I get from just reading results from a traditional search engine is lost when I get an answer from a LLM. I find it somewhat uncomfortable to just accept the a…
Am I the only one who double checks all of the information presented to me, from any source?
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#47I 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 revie…
In response to the final sentence, you can work around this by breaking your problem or question down into smaller pieces. Essentially forcing it to reason, manually.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#48I subscribe to https://kagi.com/. I use search to find expert and authoritative sources of information with human authors who can be held responsible for their contents, and that I can cite in my own work. I’m not interested in the output of a copy-paste machine that steals others’ work, makes things up, and spits out prose worse than a politician’s.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#49[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Googl…
Why would you even search for that out of the context of the IDE where you're coding or writing documentation? If you're writing bash you'd have all those man pages loaded in context for it to answer questions and generate code properly.