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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

#301

Post by hombre_fatal »

virgil_disgr4ce wrote: post #283
WarmWash wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody wants to pay for anything, so the services that figured out how to profit from people not paying will win. There was this idea born in the late '90's/early 00's that everything digital should be free. The internet was dominated by teenagers with no job and no credit card, so it made sense. But the result of that has been a whole generation with an allergy to compensation, and the inability for anyone to compet…

> Nobody wants to pay for anything Congratulations, this might be the single most trivially-disprovable statement I've ever seen on this site

Try to respond with substance here on HN. Their point can’t be summarized by what you quoted, yet you responded to a quote.

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

#303

Post by lagrange77 »

0xAstro wrote: post #257

I am surprised people are not talking about Brave and its goggles which allow to block off crappy searches like pinterest all the time + a neat community feature and biggest point, its own search index.

I'm using the 'Hacker News / 1k short' goggle all the time.

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

#304

Post by GuB-42 »

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…

> https://

Pre-2010 Google search didn't use https by default, almost no one did besides specific cases, like processing payment. And even then, only the critical part was https, the rest, like images was plain http. So, for a true pre-2010 experience, you want http:// links.

Post-2010 Google played an important role in pushing for https. From boosting https search results, to Chrome being annoying to unencrypted connections, to sponsoring Let's Encrypt, to forcing HSTS on their TLDs.

I kind of miss http, it was a time when the web was a public thing, a place for sharing, not for keeping secrets. But to be fair that's just nostalgia, the modern (commercial) web that generalized encryption enabled is so useful and convenient that I can't imagine going back.

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

#305

Post by visarga »

Wondering if anyone considered the idea of saving search stubs and using local LLM as agents with it. Could cut the search engine completely from the loop.

The idea is simple: collect search stubs, short documents with routing information about a topic. When you want to search something your agent finds the right stub and looks up where on the web to go find that information. Your information is always fresh, while a search stub changes slowly, over years, because the entry points tend to be more stable.

If we use a 4B local model and another 4GB for search stubs it could be portable enough to download and install. As you use it you also generate your own search stubs on top of the generic package. A stub could contain links to news feeds, high quality hubs, search engines and of course, actual websites. High quality search stubs can be generated with any frontier LLM piggy backing on its agentic search capabilities.

I think the idea of managing a collection of search stubs as a replacement for centralized search engines is important because it would wean us of one of the last centralized points of the internet. Google plays many ranking games on top of users and publishers, serving their own interests first. I want out of that arrangement.

local LLM + local stub index + proxy == anonymity

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

#306

Post by jmull »

rpdillon wrote: post #100
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…

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…

I think the main value proposition of Kagi is that you're the customer not the product. As far as I know they are delivering on that.

The search infrastructure you're talking about is a natural part of that, but, like any infrastructure, it scales the organization it's supporting. Kagi is tiny so their "original infrastructure" contributions are tiny.

Put another way, you essentially were investing in infrastructure, but you were hoping for major infrastructure and what is happening is small infrastructure. Kagi would probably need to get much bigger to be able to do the infrastructure you're talking about. (And if they were much bigger, it should be natural -- at a certain scale it will make more sense to do your own than work with someone else's.)

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

#307

Post by severino »

afavour wrote: post #276
severino wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point in stopping paying money to Russia if Kagi is incorporated in Palo Alto, so it's paying money and will continue to do so to a country causing no less troubles than Russia?

Two wrongs don’t make a right. Much of the HN audience lives in the US, giving money to the US is unavoidable in life. But in return we do have the democratic ability to try to alter the behavior of the country. It still makes sense to avoid giving money to other bad actors who are acting in direct opposition to your home country, and whom you have no control over, when you can.

Then one should ask for Kagi to move to a country that doesn't use taxes to invade other countries, and stop supporting them, instead of just asking to "stop paying money to Russia". Because fixing two wrongs is better than just fixing one, right? And I want to believe that living in the US doesn't make you agree with your country's foreign policy (which doesn't seem to change significantly even with your democratic ability to try to alter it) specially if you're worried about Russia.

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

#308

Post by margalabargala »

ragazzina wrote: post #245
jwr wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What other countries do you want nothing to do with?

North Korea, Eritrea, a few others but Russia is the only one in the list getting paid for search indexes.

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

#309

Post by carlosjobim »

latexr wrote: post #196

It annoys me to no end that Safari only gives you a limited set of search engines to pick from. Changing it to anything else requires a cumbersome trick of catching a search URL and redirecting to something else, which not only stops you from using that particular search engine, it makes every search slower you’re sending your query to two entities instead of one. Seeing as Apple has reportedly partnered with Google…

On MacOS Safari you can set your homepage / new tab page to whatever search engine you like. It's almost as convenient. On iOS it's worse.

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

#310

Post by dools »

The funny thing is that as much as everyone complains about AI overviews and Google losing the plot and so on, about a year and a half ago the “where did you hear about us” field on my website stopped being dominated by “Google” and started being dominated by “ChatGPT”.

Normal people are using AI for search more already, Google is just trying to stop their primary business from completely disappearing.

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