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Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore

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Re: Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore

#41

Post by tsukikage »

You are the google search engine pre-2010, well before Google lost their "don't be evil" motto, made the first results page favour sponsors and added AI overview. You respond to a search query with a list of https:// URLs, each accompanied by a representative quote from the destination page that demonstrates the link's relevance to the query, and nothing else. The query is:

We live in the dystopia we deserve. We have built it with our own hands and it is here to stay.

Re: Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore

#42

Post by givinguflac »

Barbing wrote: post #31
fbnlsr wrote: post #17

I usually switch between DuckDuckGo and Startpage. Both are good.

What (What do you search) they stink vs. Google even though Startpage is proxying them. DDG is _not_ a “good” search engine — please, anybody have a hundred side-by-side screenshots to compare identical searches? Edit - also admit Kagi’s great, I’m not affiliated; if you have money Kagi should be the pick (ideally purchased via their more private payment options probably)

What are your metrics for good? I’ve exclusively used ddg for years and have zero issues. You ask for an outrageous level of proof- you prove it’s not good.

Re: Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore

#43

Post by Forgeties79 »

d12bb wrote: post #7

I switched to Kagi little over a year ago and couldn’t recommend it enough. The search results are actually what I’m searching for, there is AI for the occasions I want it (and only then), and it comes with nice extras like search personalization and a great translation app. Tried to live without it when my first year of subscription ran out, but I didn’t last long…

I tinkered with it two or three years ago and didn’t really stick with it. I just made it my default on Firefox again and going to try for a few weeks. Appreciate the nudge

Re: Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore

#45

Post by thenthenthen »

Nicksil wrote: post #44
thenthenthen wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen this posted many times but can anyone elaborate?

>I have seen this posted many times but can anyone elaborate? Read the article.

Thank you. “ What if you took Startpage and made it simpler? The search engine &udm=14 is named for the string of characters it appends to all of your searches on Google. If you add &udm=14 to your Google searches, you’ll get the same Google results, only without an AI overview. But doing that yourself after every search is pretty annoying. That’s why &udm=14 does it for you automatically.” (Sorry i am in a country where text only websites like Hackernews are one of the few places that load within 5 seconds instead of minutes)

Re: Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore

#47

Post by lelandbatey »

amazingamazing wrote: post #36
Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #32

I'm surprised that Perplexity isn't mentioned in the article or on HN. It has replaced Google for all but the most trivial queries. It runs circles around Google for finding anything niche or underspecified. I use it through OpenRouter - I love how the pricing is per search and isn't a subscription.

Do you gave an example query? I am curious.

Perplexity.ai

It's an AI like Google's "AI mode", in that it also surfaces URLs. I have not found it to be a good search engine replacement.

Re: Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore

#48

Post by scratchyone »

smgpie wrote: post #15

I am indeed looking into an alternative to Google recently, but more because of my need of a good search mcp server for my coding agents. I am thinking about either exa or kagi, but I have no idea which one is better. Also exa seems not quite frequently mentioned in the community, wondering why.

I've had generally good experiences with Exa, I use it as an MCP in all my various coding tools and use the API whenever I build an AI thing that needs search.

Also an extremely happy Kagi user but can't speak to their API, haven't tried it yet.

Re: Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore

#49

Post by nchmy »

Barbing wrote: post #31
fbnlsr wrote: post #17

I usually switch between DuckDuckGo and Startpage. Both are good.

What (What do you search) they stink vs. Google even though Startpage is proxying them. DDG is _not_ a “good” search engine — please, anybody have a hundred side-by-side screenshots to compare identical searches? Edit - also admit Kagi’s great, I’m not affiliated; if you have money Kagi should be the pick (ideally purchased via their more private payment options probably)

I've been generally satisfied with ddg for a few years now. Started using it when Google was had obviously turned to shit, didn't look further.

Re: Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore

#50

Post by bobajeff »

nekzn wrote: post #18

I must be the only person in this website who is happy with the AI Overview feature. It messes up sometimes (very rarely) but so do websites. And between ads, cookie popups, newsletter popups, notification permission popups, websites with a high Time to First Byte, and all the useless filler around the content, websites are a nightmare to browse. I would say that for almost all of my searches the AI Overview feature…

I also like their AI Overview (though just like all the other LLMs it confidently tells me wrong info all the time). Still I miss when Google was a good information retrieval system where you could give it a string of text and it would find just about anything I was trying to remember having seen somewhere before.
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