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Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

danluu.com

211–220 of 493 posts

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#211
mostly my search is now Wikipedia.

I'm probably in a very small group who have the entirety of English wikipedia (without images) on my Android (via Kiwix), and I just search that. 99% of the time that's all I need.

the only exceptions are super current things like weather (Windy), or travel (Navan work travel system gives me enough to just go direct to airlines, hotels, etc), and local (OSM via Organic Maps).

I've almost completely degoogled (not intentionally, but driven gradually by Google becoming crappy incrementally), but didn't really find a single generic replacement as much as I found far better single purpose tools.

I'm reminded of that Craigslist image showing how many startups were each competing against specific parts of Craigslist https://cbi-blog.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/20... , and this is what it feels like is happening to Google.. they're being beaten in specific areas, but at the same time spam and crap is diluting their core product.

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#212

This makes so much sense why people think search results are bad. Great results for "Download youtube videos" is "Ideally, the top hit would be yt-dlp or a thin, graphical, wrapper around yt-dlp" Just give me a website where I can plug in the DL link and download it to my hard drive. I don't care what package they are using (I don't worry about malware like I did in the 90s). 99.999% of people are not programming tin…

The first result on Kagi is exactly this, just tried it a moment ago. It processed and downloaded the video extremely fast. Why would any reasonable person prefer youtube-dl?

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#213

Can someone tell me why Bing, and thus DDG, has switched to prioritizing local results? I'll search the most inane things, like lyrics to a song, and get results for local businesses containing maybe one word in common. It's most frustrating with phone numbers. I picked up the habit of searching the random numbers that called me, to try and find out if they were possibly important. I used to get a bunch of spam sites…

In my country (Colombia) Google still has not removed those spam sites that just generate all possible numbers.

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't get that sentiment. Currently Kagi is just as dependent on Google as DuckDuckGo is on Bing. That might only be temporary of course and Kagi does seem to be working on a search engine of their own. Rather than wanting Kagi to take the place of DuckDuckGo, it would would be better if Kagi could take users from Google, and then when ready, drop Google as a search provider.

Kagi mixes google, bing, some non-profit small-web SE, and their own index.

I don't think they use Bing, but yes, Google, Marginalia, Yandex, Brave and others. I still fail to see how that's different to DuckDuckGo, who also run their own crawler. It's really weird that people are almost hating on DuckDuckGo for how they run their search engine, while applauding Kagi, for doing the same, but with a different business model.

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#215

Can someone tell me why Bing, and thus DDG, has switched to prioritizing local results? I'll search the most inane things, like lyrics to a song, and get results for local businesses containing maybe one word in common. It's most frustrating with phone numbers. I picked up the habit of searching the random numbers that called me, to try and find out if they were possibly important. I used to get a bunch of spam sites…

Man, thank you for saying this. Stuffing results with geolocated local junk despite explicitly opting out by choosing “All regions” is so frustrating. This wasn’t happening a year or two ago. I submit negative feedback about it constantly, but I guess not enough people are doing that for anyone to notice or care. I’ve also noticed a significant increase in attempts to stuff news into regular search results. I really…

Hah, calling the news "mental health poison" is the most accurate thing I've read all day.

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#217

Current Kagi results for those without an account to compare: youtube downloader https://kagi.com/search?q=youtube+downloader&r=us&sh=_szITdy... ad blocker https://kagi.com/search?q=Ad+blocker&r=us&sh=-BHzV2ZoCDpmgOu... download Firefox https://kagi.com/search?q=Download+Firefox&r=us&sh=zkkmc_EQX... why do wider tires have better grip? https://kagi.com/search?q=Why+do+wider+tires+have+better+gri... why do they keep m…

Kagi gives me websites that require more clicking; Google just gives me reasonable answers and I don't see spam in your examples.

"why do wider tires have better grip?"

Wider tires provide more grip due to a larger contact patch with the road. While it's true that friction is not directly dependent on surface area, a larger contact patch allows for more even weight distribution and better traction, particularly during cornering. This can result in improved handling and stability.

"why do they keep making cpu transistors smaller?"

Smaller transistors can do more calculations without overheating, which makes them more power efficient. It also allows for smaller die sizes, which reduce costs and can increase density, allowing more cores per chip.

"vancouver snow forecast winter 2023"

The forecast for the 2023/2024 season suggests that we can expect another winter marked by ample snowfall and temperatures hovering both slightly above and below the freezing mark. Be prepared ahead of time.

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hope kagi takes ddg place in terms of adoption. never really liked ddg even though i always care about privacy.

I really don't get that sentiment. Currently Kagi is just as dependent on Google as DuckDuckGo is on Bing. That might only be temporary of course and Kagi does seem to be working on a search engine of their own. Rather than wanting Kagi to take the place of DuckDuckGo, it would would be better if Kagi could take users from Google, and then when ready, drop Google as a search provider.

Kagi should hire the Marginalia author.

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#220
post #38

I reckon these days search is pretty difficult and everyone knows how to game it. I recommend using a search engine that lets you effectively change which sites are shown. You can do this with Kagi, or with Google's Programmable Search Engines - I'm sure there are more too. In particular I block Youtube, not because they aren't sometimes correct, but because I don't want videos polluting the regular results - it just…

> In particular I block Youtube, not because they aren't sometimes correct, but because I don't want videos polluting the regular results - it just takes too long to get info from videos. Funnily enough, lately I've been prioritizing YT videos more when searching. So many sites now are just regurgitated SEO farms with minimal quality, and easy to see why: it's minimal effort to produce and cheap to host. But making a…

That's curious, I generally hate video due to inability to glance over content, and the few attempts I made to actually find useful information I searched for resulted in... spammy extra low effort video content that did not answer my questions.
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