Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore

Post by satvikpendem » Mon, May 25, 2026, 2:29 PM UTC

asciimoo wrote: post #122

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…

Post by kurthr » Mon, May 25, 2026, 2:30 PM UTC

tsukikage wrote: post #41

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…

Post by jwr » Mon, May 25, 2026, 2:31 PM UTC

nobodywasishere wrote: post #162

rpdillon wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> didn't realize Kagi had no aspirations to build their own general purpose index Kagi employee here. We're actively working on building our own indexes beyond the limited ones we have now, not just a general index but also purpose built indexes for things like programming, etc.

Post by qznc » Mon, May 25, 2026, 2:31 PM UTC

asciimoo wrote: post #122

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…

Post by HappMacDonald » Mon, May 25, 2026, 2:32 PM UTC

iamalizard wrote: post #108

westurner wrote: post #98

They used to have: - Organize the world's information - Don't be evil Who was president at this time? Was this while they were denying students the option to code on the computers we bought for them because security ? From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil : > Between 21 April and 4 May 2018, Google removed the motto from the preface, leaving a mention in the final line: "And remember... don't be evil, an…

People think Google removing "Don't be evil" means Google somewhat implicitly told everyone they'll be evil from now on. That doesn't make much sense. It was likely a marketing decision since having "evil" in your motto is not good even if you explicitly state "DON'T BE" before it. Just like if I write in my profile text "I'm not a pedo", you'll think "this guy is likely a pedo"