Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 614 posts

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

#111

Post by 1over137 »

Bombthecat wrote: post #92
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…

As a user: I love it! As a former blogger: I hate it. But I knew years ago where things were heading and stopped. No point in blogging/ writing etc.

What was your point in blogging before? And how is that point gone because of google's behaviour?

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

#112

Post by plqbfbv »

scratchyone wrote: post #55
ohyoutravel wrote: post #2

Kagi. Just use Kagi. It is by far far far the best. Best money I spend, aside from Fastmail. https://kagi.com/

As someone who also loves Kagi, what do you like so much about Fastmail? Seeing it compared to Kagi makes me want to give it a try as well haha.

Just like parent poster, there's a few things I pay for, and those are Kagi and Fastmail :)

Fastmail is... FAST. The page refresh is basically instant, and the UI is super-snappy, well refined and something like 2026, while Gmail hasn't changed in... 15 years? It supports a lot of features (identities, masked addresses, ...), not to mention that I can have my domains properly hosted on it, for 5eur/mo.

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

#113

Post by okuntilnow »

kavok wrote: post #68
vucetica wrote: post #60

I liked Kagi a lot, but gave up on it as I couldn’t configure it as a default search engine on iOS. Ended up with Duckduck go.

You can set Kagi as the default search engine today on iOS. Unless I’m misunderstanding.

Only with an extension, at least in the UK.

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

#114

Post by Akronymus »

king_geedorah wrote: post #85
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…

[flagged]

From the HN guidelines:

> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.

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

#115

Post by Barbing »

jeltz wrote: post #87
Barbing wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we both blocking Google ads and scrolling past the AI summary? Their business practices are just the worst. But are the first 10 blue links they show you usually bad? (Like you know that one of those 10 should be the exact thing you want, so you decide to rely on another search engine instead, & the alternative search succeeds where Google failed)

Yes, I am. And these days Google has become about as bad as DDG. And not because DDG has become better.

Have read this comment before multiple times, even a year or two ago. Hence my “unreasonable” demand for screenshots if someone has the minutes to script it. - Hmm, really should be a live site to track over time... Can make that and Show [Three People On] HN!

(Google could give better results to those unloyal to them, as one example, so testing needed! We could be getting wildly different results or just have starkly different usage tendencies, there’s just no way I could disagree with so many of y’all on something this basic assuming no DDG astroturfing or anything unless we’re looking at things differently one way or another)

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

#116

Post by kgwxd »

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…

Needing to be authenticated too run a search feels very wrong, in soooo many ways.

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

#117

Post by neya »

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…

Once in a while someone recommends Kagi and I do go check it out. However, the index size is very small. It depends a lot on what you search but for most of my searches, it is not enough. I feel duckduckgo and bing together are a perfect replacement instead.

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

#118

Post by whstl »

margorczynski wrote: post #77
bobajeff wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Still I miss when Google was a good information retrieval system I think a large part of the blame is not on Google but on the websites themselves. The Internet has been enshittified by a gargantuan amount of spam sites and content mills created just to generate clicks and boost SEO. At least AI offers a way to filter out the noise at the cost of relying on how it was trained and what the creators thought is good d…

The blame for this is 100% on Google.

They constantly reward websites that are on a hamster-wheel of chasing the latest SEO trends, while penalizing websites that have actual information for not jumping through the same hoops.

A company I know operated TWENTY THOUSAND blogspam blogs out of a single server/IP. Google knew all along that this was happening (the companies had strategic partnerships) and never did anything about it.

The last thing they did anything significant was when, Panda in 2011?

At this point it's clear they're a monopoly and only care about websites who cater to their whims + making money. Search be damned.

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

#120

Post by rpastuszak »

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…

> 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

Yes, but most of these things are results of adtech having so much impact on the web/how we publish/consume/get paid for the content we create. I'm a bit bitter/sad about this.

Post reply on HN