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DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

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Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#211

Post by palata »

vinc wrote: post #119
palata wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever tried counting your searches? You may be surprised. I'm slightly above the 500/month.

Not the OP but I just checked my 3 months history and I'm at 800, 469, and 682 searches on DuckDuckGo and 466, 535, and 482 on Google. I feel like I'm a heavy search engine user and I'd have guessed more than this. I'm considering paying for Kagi but the price seems a bit high, especially considering that I replaced some of my searches with ChatGPT and I pay much less for using the API of OpenAI. But maybe their API…

I completely agree with the fact that not everyone can afford paying for Kagi. However, I seem to read from a lot of people who could afford it, but find it too expensive.

The thing is that searches have a price. If Google makes it free, that's because they make money from the data they gather, right? And probably the data is worth more than people guess. Maybe Kagi would be able to be cheaper if it had more users (some kind of economy of scale), but in the meantime, that's the only alternative I see.

So I'm ready to pay for it now to help prove that it is viable to ask people to pay for their product. Because I can afford it.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#212

Post by manmal »

mzi wrote: post #185
freediver wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1000 searches are included in the $10 plan. Currently you are offered the option to pay for additional searches at 1.5 cents per search. Not ideal we know, but someone needs to pay for those, and the notice you received is courtesy (you can also remove it). How would you handle this differently?

At least my render of the pricing page gives that 700 searches per day are included in the $10 plan, with additional searches priced at ¢1.5. So 1000 searches would be $14.5 plus conversion fee if you don't have a dollar account.

It's 700 per month, not per day.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#213

Post by _8j50 »

DanHulton wrote: post #70

I debated bringing up Kagi at the top level here, since I already commented on it in a reply, but honestly I really want them to succeed and shit like this is why. It's a paid search service, and I'm honestly really happy with that distinction and what it entails. Being paid means that they can deliver on and support features that users can use to get the best results for them, without worrying how those features may…

I don't want them to fail but I have 0 support for Kagi after trying them out. Main reason is they collect PII and have no privacy friendly payment options. They should have gone the way if Mullvad with that. Another reason is requiring an account for search is begging to be tracked but even if that is not an issue, it is sooo annoying having to sign in to search and even more annoying when auto complete for a search takes me to kagi but I no longer have that account so I have to face a login page and then navigate away and redo the search.

They made the critical mistake of not keeping it simple. If they wanted profits, why make it hard for people to pay them? If they wanted market share, why not have a free tier so people can try before they buy. They're only staying afloat in tech-circle hype imo.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#214

Post by manmal »

freediver wrote: post #163
manmal wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Kagi is great, but I’m paying on the order of €10 per month and was suddenly told yesterday that I exceeded my 1k requests quota. That’s not a great way of dealing with paying customers. Google warned me multiple times before they hiked my Workspace price. I’m _this_ close to going back to DDG with the occasional Google drilldown.

1000 searches are included in the $10 plan. Currently you are offered the option to pay for additional searches at 1.5 cents per search. Not ideal we know, but someone needs to pay for those, and the notice you received is courtesy (you can also remove it). How would you handle this differently?

I'd like to be warned before hitting a hard limit, in whichever way. E.g. warning emails ("You've reached 80% of your quota"), or a meter on the search page.

From a higher POV, I like GPT-4's smaller time windows way better (x queries within 4 hour window). I hate to be "locked out" of search for a whole week. A few hours wouldn't feel that bad.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#215

Post by npteljes »

jdironman wrote: post #107
p-e-w wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I was actually hoping for an answer that doesn't require blind trust. So the correct answer seems to be "we absolutely could link your searches to your identity, but we promise that we won't; however, you cannot verify that we are keeping that promise". Which I'm afraid is not good enough. To be clear, I'm not saying that they are lying, and indeed I have no reason to suspect they are. But I'm looking for techno…

Why not just have a payment method that isn't linked to you?

This is not unrealistic at all. For curious people, here's how the Posteo email service does it:

https://posteo.de/en/site/privacy#anonymisedpayment

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#216

Post by freediver »

_8j50 wrote: post #213
DanHulton wrote: post #70

I debated bringing up Kagi at the top level here, since I already commented on it in a reply, but honestly I really want them to succeed and shit like this is why. It's a paid search service, and I'm honestly really happy with that distinction and what it entails. Being paid means that they can deliver on and support features that users can use to get the best results for them, without worrying how those features may…

I don't want them to fail but I have 0 support for Kagi after trying them out. Main reason is they collect PII and have no privacy friendly payment options. They should have gone the way if Mullvad with that. Another reason is requiring an account for search is begging to be tracked but even if that is not an issue, it is sooo annoying having to sign in to search and even more annoying when auto complete for a search…

Kagi does not collect PII. You can register with a fake email if you want to. Payment information (if any) is collected by Stripe, not Kagi.

How would you keep it simple while running a paid search service with non-trivial search cost?

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#217

Post by geraldhh »

nologic01 wrote: post #161

My experience with both DDG, which I use as default, and Google, which I use as backup has been steadily deteriorating over time. That is the opposite of what you would expect if incentives and business models around this most basic utility were not broken. If people can build collectively incredibly useful resources like wikipedia and openstreetmap why not an index of the web as a public good that is devoid of the r…

the capacity of a community for content generation grows faster than the capacity for self moderation, putting a limit on group-size in regards to the level of 'unwanted' content (spam, hate, porn ...).

automated moderation or more tolerance are needed to extend the group further; one of those can be bought with money.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#218

Post by lelanthran »

xlii wrote: post #111
DanHulton wrote: post #70

I debated bringing up Kagi at the top level here, since I already commented on it in a reply, but honestly I really want them to succeed and shit like this is why. It's a paid search service, and I'm honestly really happy with that distinction and what it entails. Being paid means that they can deliver on and support features that users can use to get the best results for them, without worrying how those features may…

I’ve been using Kagi for multiple months and due to advocacy I made few people pay for it too, but I’m completely disheartened by their business model. The whole explanation of the recent “we want to stay afloat” was weird, unexpected (price doubling with my usage, to 20$/mo) and felt untrue (ordinary user doing 30 searches per day?). I felt like it was written by Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler - made sense but also very…

+1 to Brave as an alternative. From the search results I get the impression that they are much more aggressive in weeding out SEO-optimised sites that do nothing but:

1. Force you to signup to see the content (pinterest, I'm looking at you).

2. Copy-n-paste SO threads onto a page that is 90% ads.

I expect that ChatGPT written content for sites that are 90% ads will soon make it difficult to determine the useful sites.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#219

Post by creshal »

xyst wrote: post #64

For what it’s worth: I have been using Ecosia as my preferred search engine. Basically it just forwards requests to Bing in exchange for ad revenue which is used to plant trees. Have been able to use the advanced keywords and operators to filter results with Ecosia https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/advanced-search-ke... https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/advanced-search-op... Sometimes the search resul…

If the DDG changes are caused by Bing pricing changes, won't that also affect Ecosia sooner or later?

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#220

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

DanHulton wrote: post #70

I debated bringing up Kagi at the top level here, since I already commented on it in a reply, but honestly I really want them to succeed and shit like this is why. It's a paid search service, and I'm honestly really happy with that distinction and what it entails. Being paid means that they can deliver on and support features that users can use to get the best results for them, without worrying how those features may…

"Kagi Search includes anonymized requests to traditional search indexes like Google and Bing as well as sources like Wikipedia, DeepL, and other APIs."

https://help.kagi.com/kagi/why-kagi/kagi-vs-brave.html

If many users all send their search queries through a proxy that forwwards them to, say, Google, then one can argue these queries are "anonymised" to some extent.

This has been tried. But AFAIK, no one has ever tried to charge money for it.

In 2003, there was Scroogle which lasted for almost 10 years and was reputedly forwarding hundreds of thousands of searches per day.

Scroogle used to have its own Wikipedia page before it was deleted then merged into the "Criticisms_of_Google" Wikipedia page.

https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/privacy-what-should-google...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AScroogle

In 2010, there was GoogleSharing, a Firefox plugin. It did not last very long and unlike Scroogle I cannot recall any explanation was ever given why it was shut down.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/10/04/a-bett...

Criticisms of Scroogle or GoogleSharing might include having to trust the people operating the proxy servers. With respect to continuation of ad-free, no BS service and with respect to privacy.

For example, if operator gets a strongly-worded letter on law firm letterhead then will he share a user's search results. What if he receives a directive from some legal authority demanding that a user's queries be monitored and/or preserved. Will he notify the user. Will he fight such requests. How good are his lawyers. Does he even have any that are prepared to handle these matters.

The same issues apply to Kagi.

Being a paid service might actually improve these trust problems, assuming there is a contract with the user. The last time I looked for Kagi's terms, it was not reassuring. What does Kagi promise to do or refrain from doing. If Kagi agrees to zero liability for almost anything, then to me that's a red flag. Why would anyone trust him. At the very least, users should be able to sue for up to the amount of the fees they have paid if Kagi breaches the agreement.

NB. I am not for or against Kagi. I like the proxy server idea and wish there were more options to use proxies. However I do not agree that merely paying for web search solves all the problems. I wrote scripts for own use that search multiple indexes, filter out garbage and combine results into a simple, minimalist SERP with unprefixed URLs suitable for a text-only browser. For me, that addresses the paid placement ads and ranking algorithm problems. As for the privacy problems, I cannot find anything that promises Kagi will not collect data about users. The same problem of trust as in 2003 through 2012 exists today. Arguably things have gotten worse. As we've seen from so-called "tech" companies offering "pay to stop the ads" subscriptions, paying fees does not stop the data collection. It does not solve the privacy problems. Perhaps if the search engine operator was actually bound by an agreement or laws that prohibited it from collecting data or restricted its use of data. But even with that, how does one detect non-compliance.

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