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Ollama Web Search

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Re: Ollama Web Search

#161
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make an account to use their hosted models AND to have them available via the Ollama API LOCALLY. I'm spending $100 on Claude and $200 on GPT5, so $20 bucks is NOTHING and totally worth having access to: Qwen3 235b Deepseek 3.1 671b (thinking and non thinking) Llama 3.1 405b GPT OSS 120b Those are hardly "small inferior models". What is really cool is that you can set Codex up to use Ollama's API and then have it…

Has anyone tried the hosted models? How do they compare to GPT-5? I was thinking about trying ChatGPT Pro, but I seem to have completely missed that they bumped the price from $100 to $200. It was $100 just a while ago, right? Before GPT-5, I assume.

No it was never $100 for ChatGPT Pro.

Re: Ollama Web Search

#162
post #86

WTF is going to happen to Google's ad revenue if every PC has an AI that can perform searches on the user's behalf?

There are millions of websites, and a local LLM cannot scrape all of them to make sense of them. Think about it. OpenAI can do it because they spend millions to train its systems. Many sites have hidden sitemaps that cannot be found unless submitted to google directly. (Not even listed in robots txt most of the time). There is no way a local LLM can keep up with up to date internet.

No, the AI will just use Google, DDG, Bing, etc on behalf of the user (behind the scenes). The ads will be shown to the AI which will ignore them.

Re: Ollama Web Search

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes! that is why I want to provide the names of the providers we use. I do believe in building in the open. The web search functionality has a very generous free tier (it is behind Ollama's free account to prevent abuse) that allows you to give it a try comparing to running a searxng server locally. On making the search functionality locally -- we made considerations and gave it a try but had trouble around result…

How much is the generous free tier? I couldn't find it in the website.

I believe it's free.

Re: Ollama Web Search

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make an account to use their hosted models AND to have them available via the Ollama API LOCALLY. I'm spending $100 on Claude and $200 on GPT5, so $20 bucks is NOTHING and totally worth having access to: Qwen3 235b Deepseek 3.1 671b (thinking and non thinking) Llama 3.1 405b GPT OSS 120b Those are hardly "small inferior models". What is really cool is that you can set Codex up to use Ollama's API and then have it…

If you are on $100 tier Claude, what makes you think the $20 Tier Ollama is enough for you ?

Clearly articulated and repeating what makes the $20 Ollama tier valuable to me is:

1. Access to specific large open models (Qwen3 235b, Deepseek 3.1 671b, Llama 3.1 405b, GPT OSS 120b)

2. Having them available via the Ollama API LOCALLY

3. The ability to set up Codex to use Ollama's API for running tools on different models

I mean, really, nothing else is even close at this point and I would rather eat a bug than use Microsoft's cloud.

Re: Ollama Web Search

#165
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, so it looks like you aren't willing to share which providers you are working with. Can you share the rationale for not sharing that information instead?

We have relationships with many providers and I don't want to be seen as promoting or not promoting a specific provider. Some decent privacy-preserving vendors - Brave, Exa, Parallel Web Systems, DuckDuckGo etc We will continue to monitor what's good to improve the output quality and results. Sometimes it could be the combination of providers to yield even better results. If I say one combination right now, and reali…

DuckDuckGo isn't a provider, it's just Bing wearing a duck hat.

Re: Ollama Web Search

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are on $100 tier Claude, what makes you think the $20 Tier Ollama is enough for you ?

If your workflow is general enough, you can (and should) switch between models. They all have different styles and blind spots. Like I had Codex + gpt-5-codex (20€ tier) build me a network connectivity monitor for my very specific use case. It worked, but had some really weird choices. Gave it to Claude Code (20€ tier again) and it immediately found a few issues and simplifications.

Right. And then there's using an MCP tool that instantiates another agent except uses a different model.

Here's a good example. For summarization of a page of content. Content is maybe pulled down by an agentic crawler, so using a local model to summarize is great. It's fast, doesn't cost anything (or much) and I can run it without guardrails as it doesn't represent a cost risk if it ran out of control.

Re: Ollama Web Search

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pardon me but is Ollama a company though? I didn't knew that actually. And are they VC funded? Are they funded by Y-combinator or anything else.. I just thought it was a project by someone to write something similar to docker but for LLM's and that was its pitch for a really really long time I think

Yup thats exactly what I thought as well. I also found out late and to much surprise that its a VC backed startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/ollama

Oh well. Enshittenification is close then I suppose :Gotta pay those VC juicy returns somehow.

Re: Ollama Web Search

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats what I thought so as well - that it was for people like me who arent professional SWEs and thus im sad to see them go this way. But what ive found is people are using it for "on-prem" style deployment, have no idea if this is common but I wouldnt be surprised given the reality of AI startups + the abundance of ollama in training dataset leading to relatively greater vibe coding success rate

If people are using ollama for on prem deployment, for anything more than single user hobby use or backend for a UI proof of concept, then run as far away as you can from those people. Major red flag, immediately disqualifying.

What's your preferred method to do on prem deployment today?

Re: Ollama Web Search

#169

WTF is going to happen to Google's ad revenue if every PC has an AI that can perform searches on the user's behalf?

How is that any different than someone installing an ad blocker in their browser? Arguably ad blocker is much simpler technology than running a local LLM and has been available for years now. And yet Google’s ad revenue seems to have remained unaffected.

It's been demonstrated that as ChatGPT usage goes up, traffic to sites dependent on SEO search ranking has gone down, roughly proportionally, every month over the last ~18 months. ChatGPT is free and fast and requires no technical know-how. Installing an ad blocker requires knowing what one is, and the time and energy to install a browser plugin. Pretty much everyone I know thinks free online ChatGPT type products is an absolute existential thread to Google's ad dominance. Even mediocre LLMs provide a vastly better experience than ad choked pages linking to ad choked SEO optimized websites serving (largely) google's own ads.
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