Waiting for dawn in search: Search index, Google rulings and impact on Kagi • Hacker News Board

Re: Waiting for dawn in search: Search index, Google rulings and impact on Kagi

#11

Post by shadowgovt » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 6:13 PM UTC

xnx wrote: post #3

> Because direct licensing isn’t available to us on compatible terms, we - like many others - use third-party API providers for SERP-style results Crazy for a company to admit: "Google won't let us whitelabel their core product so we steal it and resell it."

But in this current climate, they can admit it and then dare Google to tell them to stop... After Google has just had an antitrust ruling against it for dominating the search market.

Google doesn't really have a leg to stand on and they know it.

Re: Waiting for dawn in search: Search index, Google rulings and impact on Kagi

#12

Post by shadowgovt » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 6:14 PM UTC

browningstreet wrote: post #10

OGEnthusiast wrote: post #6

Sounds like we need a nationalized search engine company then?

I wouldn't trust a nationalized search engine company. That said, there are projects like Common Crawl and in Europe, Ecosia + Qwant. I personally would like to see a search enginge PaaS and a music streaming library PaaS that would let others hook up and pay direct usage fees.

An interoperable search index access standard might work. We've done something similar for peering and the backbone of the IP-layer interconnects themselves.

Re: Waiting for dawn in search: Search index, Google rulings and impact on Kagi

#13

Post by chroma205 » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 6:16 PM UTC

ajdude wrote: post #8

Does anyone else use the phrase "I'm going to google XYZ" while referring to actually searching it up on Kagi, DDG, or another search engine?

[flagged]

Re: Waiting for dawn in search: Search index, Google rulings and impact on Kagi

#14

Post by jeremyjh » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 6:18 PM UTC

ajdude wrote: post #8

Does anyone else use the phrase "I'm going to google XYZ" while referring to actually searching it up on Kagi, DDG, or another search engine?

Yes, it’s like Xerox or Kleenex except it’s actually still a monopoly. In a happy Kagi user but I know hardly anyone else is.

Re: Waiting for dawn in search: Search index, Google rulings and impact on Kagi

#15

Post by dijksterhuis » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 6:19 PM UTC

ajdude wrote: post #8

Does anyone else use the phrase "I'm going to google XYZ" while referring to actually searching it up on Kagi, DDG, or another search engine?

nope, i say “i’m going to search for XYZ” or similar

Re: Waiting for dawn in search: Search index, Google rulings and impact on Kagi

#16

Post by hsuduebc2 » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 6:20 PM UTC

It is even worse that the Google search become shit in last years. So they gate keep only relevant information for themselves and not using them with intent to improve search quality. As always if you have no competition your innovation goes only towards cost reduction. Not product improvement.

Re: Waiting for dawn in search: Search index, Google rulings and impact on Kagi

#17

Post by techjamie » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 6:21 PM UTC

xnx wrote: post #3

> Because direct licensing isn’t available to us on compatible terms, we - like many others - use third-party API providers for SERP-style results Crazy for a company to admit: "Google won't let us whitelabel their core product so we steal it and resell it."

What's the alternative? Building a competing search index as a relative nobody on the web is very difficult, from the outset, and is made more difficult from sites taking extra measures to stop bots in general now.

Google's crawler is given special privileges in this right and can bypass basically all bot checks. Anyone else has to just wade through the mud and accept they can't index much of the web.

Re: Waiting for dawn in search: Search index, Google rulings and impact on Kagi

#18

Post by WhyNotHugo » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 6:25 PM UTC

The statistics in this article sound like garbage to me.

Google used by 90% or the world?

~20% of the human population lives in countries where Google is blocked.

OTOH, Baidu is the #1 search engine in China, which has over 15% of the world’s population… but doesn’t reach 1%?

These stats are made measuring US-based traffic, rather than “worldwide” as they claim.

Re: Waiting for dawn in search: Search index, Google rulings and impact on Kagi

#19

Post by yomismoaqui » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 6:27 PM UTC

One thing I have discovered after using AI chats that include a websearch tool is that I don't want to delve on diferent blogs, Medium posts, Stack overflow threads with passive-aggresive mod comments, dismissing cookie banners... Sorry I just want the info I'm looking for, I don't care for your personal expression or need to monetize your content.

There are other times (usually not work related) when I want to explore the web and discovering some nice little blog or special corner on the net. This is what my RSS feed reader is for.

Re: Waiting for dawn in search: Search index, Google rulings and impact on Kagi

#20

Post by eli » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 6:28 PM UTC

ajdude wrote: post #8

Does anyone else use the phrase "I'm going to google XYZ" while referring to actually searching it up on Kagi, DDG, or another search engine?

Ironically this is a bad thing for Google from a legal standpoint. If a term becomes "genericized" then it can lose trademark protection.

"Aspirin" is a famous example. It used to be a brand name for acetylsalicylic acid medication, but became such a common way to refer to it that in the US any company can now use it.