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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

#221
I turned off AI overviews in Google search a few days ago. It's often wrong and always distracting.

I changed my default search engine to: https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14

Author should mention that you can change your browser's default search engine.

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

#223

While there are good alternatives like DuckDuckGo, Mojeek, or Ecosia, there are also ad-free alternatives, where you're not the product, like Kagi [1] or Uruky [2] (I co-founded Uruky, which is also currently and for the foreseeable future "No-AI")! [1]: https://kagi.com [2]: https://uruky.com

Am I right in that I cannot demo a couple of searches without subscribing?

It does appear that way, but when you click on register you get an account valid for one day, without having to fill in any data whatsoever.

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

#225

Ohi, I'm the author of the open source Searx metasearch engine. I'm working on a self-hosted search service called Hister with the same goal when I started Searx development: reduce dependence on online search engines. Hister is a full text indexer for websites and local files which automatically saves all the visited pages rendered by your browser. It provides a flexible web (and terminal) search interface & query l…

This looks very promising. Thank you for investing time in this.

Assuming it indexes everything locally and falls back to traditional search engines if none found, how do you feel about adding a shared middle layer? A layer that simply indexes all the canonical data that doesn't have any personal info. This way, the contributors can automatically contribute the pages they index - building a shared search engine over time! The whole thing can work without a crawler of its own (under appropriate license so people can trust it)

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

#226
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 paid for Kagi for a bit, but got a weird vibe when I realized they were working pretty hard to paper over the fact that they pay a third party to scrape Google search results for them. The public-facing side of that coin is Kagi's position that Google should make their index available to competitors (see https://blog.kagi.com/waiting-dawn-search ). All that's to say: when I paid for Kagi, I thought I was investing…

Qwant and Ecosia try to build their own index: https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/06/qwant-and-ecosia-debut-sta...

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

#227
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also had a browser called Orion and till date that gave me anxiety because YouTube videos won't play the first time you load them, you need to refresh the page (randomly) and similar other weird quirks. It's state hasn't changed much over the last year either, so I switched back to Brave now.

I don’t think that’s Orion specific, I have the exact same issue with Safari and Firefox

I'll pitch in that since youtube was bought by Google it's become pretty anticompetitive too. They've absolutely been caught degrading their product on all browsers except chrome. I've witnessed this numerous times on Firefox on my android. Videos refusing to play, subtitles appearing off the screen, refusing to fullscreen, and at least 3 more annoying things i can't remember anymore.

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

#228
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 have been a Kagi subscriber for years but I do increasingly find myself using Google. It's not good at local searches or news searches. It's also not good at showing quick context like Google's knowledge graph, especially with images. Finally it's considerably slower.

Kagi is better for research and knowledge work, Google is still better for quick lookups.

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

#229
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t doubt that people feel this way. I doubt that every new account inflating the apparent consensus is genuine.

Have you bothered to check @nekzn’s comment history? Attacking new people here is going to ensure we’re left with only bots. This is one of the reasons why HN has the guidelines that you’re repeatedly breaking. If you do suspect a bot after at least taking the ten seconds to check their comment history, the best thing you can do is not engage.

I agree that not engaging would have been preferable and is going forward.

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

#230
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…

Does Kagi still use Yandex index behind the scenes? If this is true, then certain fraction of the payment goes to Russian Federation and financing its war and genocide in Ukraine. This is the reason I have to refrain from using this otherwise excellent service.
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