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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

#321

Post by _8j50 »

freediver wrote: post #281
doubtfulcan wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with high privacy focus, just having a user id given by stripe, that stripe then can connect to a real person is a liability. Mullvad allows payments in crypto and their site is accessible as an onion service. I know it definitely adds overhead to do both of those things, though personally I wouldn't mind paying a lot of extra for it. I'm not sure which fraction of users are like me though, I might just be…

Sure, but also note that it took 14 years for Mullvad to reach the point where it can support all those billing methods. Kagi launched less than a year ago with a small bootstrapped team, building a much more complex product.

Kagi can listen to its users and learn from other pro-privacy companies. Imagine if proton requires a paid account for everything for everyone.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#322

Post by fsckboy »

Super_Jambo wrote: post #206
fsckboy wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

neither the previous poster, but I'm not missing what was said, but are you missing that paying a subscription for something, if it becomes popular, becomes an irresistible audience to also advertise to? Have you seen Amazon Prime video lately? it becomes more and more festooned with ads, like happened to cable TV. Pay a subscription, and watch ads, or promotions, or product placements. They're drunk on it.

If Kagi adds ads I'll leave it.

if Kagi becomes popular, losing the early subscribers is just a drop from their bucket

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#323

Post by autoexec »

pembrook wrote: post #275
vorpalhex wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't pay $20/month for EVERY site and tool. I'm happy to pay the current $120 I do for Kagi, but that's my upper limit. I do have some web tools I pay $250 a year for, and they are significantly more complicated than kagi. With Kagi's new pricing, I will be paying >$300 a year. That is too much. They aren't THAT much better. That is literally more than my beefy dedicated gaming server in a datacenter!

That's basically my point. HN people are wealthy and spend most of their working hours and free time on the internet. They also vehemently hate ad-supported business models. Hell, I probably built my entire career off internet searches. In theory, HN people should have the most to gain from a better search engine, and be the most likely to pay for one. Yet, to your point, the alternatives are free and good enough. Th…

> It's not some "evil" companies shoving these ad-supported business models down our throats. We have all voted with our eyeballs and our (lack of) dollars

No reason both can't be true. evil companies can shovel ad-supported business models down our throats while the few paid options which have emerged haven't offered users enough value to justify the fees, being forced to be logged into an account, or having to worry about how many searches you make in a day.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#324

Post by autoexec »

Dalewyn wrote: post #260
ColinHayhurst wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is simply not true. I say this based on direct research, with users of our no-tracking search engine.

Non-techies use Microsoft, Apple, and Google accounts. Non-techies use Chrome over Firefox. Non-techies use Windows and MacOS over Linux. Non-techies use smartphones over phones. Non-techies use smart TVs over TVs. Non-techies use social media and have accounts using their real names. I reiterate: Non-techies don't give a damn about privacy.

Non-techies have a poor understanding of the risks, little awareness of privacy protecting alternatives, and a lack of confidence in installing and using new software. It's not that they don't care about their privacy.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#325

Post by user3939382 »

palata wrote: post #68
user3939382 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a big advocate of them, but they broke their promise to grandfather in users on original plans, they doubled their prices, and have everyone counting the number of searches they make. Until they get a reasonable unlimited price plan I wouldn't use them.

I guess you can't have it all. Either you are the product, or you pay for it.

I'm willing to pay but not $25/month.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#326

Post by Zuiii »

It's ironic that one of the best search engines for technical searches we have today has become yandex (which still fully supports filters) and the only reason why is because their devs didn't go out of their way to ruin their service like the rest.

I mean even searching for a literal string (part number) doesn't give me results on Google/DDG anymore. I'd be happy to use yandex as my main search engine if I didn't have to (re)solve a captcha every couple of searches.

Are there other search engines that still allow us to run powerful search queries?

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#327

Post by easygenes »

kkwtflz wrote: post #290
easygenes wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried Kagi as primary search for a few months and used DDG as primary for a long time before that. Recently I default to using phind.com. Don't think they'll be able to stay free forever, but as it is the mix of free access to GPT-4 and the focus on being developer-friendly makes it feel much better than alternatives (perplexity.ai being the closest competitor, but not feeling quite right for me).

> What AI model are you? > ANSWER > I am an AI language model powered by OpenAI's GPT-3.5-turbo. My primary purpose is to understand and generate human-like text based on the input I receive. I can perform various tasks, such as answering questions, providing explanations, and even writing code snippets. Looks like it's not on v4 yet.

The "Expert" toggle switches it to GPT-4. You can tell by how slow it responds then (note that I've seen it switch over to turbo when you ask followup questions recently).

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#328

Post by Ferret7446 »

freediver wrote: post #103
wastewastewaste wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yea, the tool tip says "200 searches is enough for 99% of Internet users", but I doubt their target demographic is the 99% that don't need more.

You are correct, Kagi current users are mostly from the remaining 1%. However that plan was made to attract the remaining 99% Internet users to Kagi (and the plan is more than sufficient for their needs).

I'm skeptical that those 99% would ever be interested in Kagi's value proposition at all. Kagi is a niche product in the contemporary context of ad funded free search engines, and it would have to survive until the other side of the adoption curve before it can reliably sell itself to the average person.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#329

Post by TonyTrapp »

scrum-treats wrote: post #301
TonyTrapp wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, according to the linked diff, that is the only remaining filter.

Got it. There are some one-offs that still function, but for the most part the filters are wiped. Bummer. I wonder if Google paid DDG to remove the filters, as a means of reclaiming search traffic.

As mentioned elsewhere, it's most likely related to a price hike for the Bing API that DDG uses. No need for conspiracy theories.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#330

Post by H12 »

Curious how people use search these days.

For me, I'm less and less using a single search engine for all my needs, rather using a plethora of engines for different tasks.

I use DDG as my default engine to ensure I get privacy by default, and if the results aren't to my liking, I use a bang to re-run the search in a different engine.

I also like to set up custom search engines in my browser with shortcuts, so if I need to search a specific GitHub org or something I can quickly run a search there from my URL bar.

A lot of the comments here saying "DDG is dead, switch to xxx instead!" strike me as not particularly relevant with my usage patterns, but I'm wondering whether I'm just in a minority.

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