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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

#361

Post by ys-matt »

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…

Have been using hister for a while now and have found it super useful! There are so many times I find myself trying to remember a website I looked at a couple months ago and can't find it again via a regular search. Hister has saved me there already multiple times.

The only feedback I have is the initial indexing from my large history was rough. There were a lot of domains that kept blocking me for exceeding rate limiting or wouldn't let me index at all. I could see it being useful to import a history file and organize it by domain inside some sort of temporary database to track/distribute attempts and get a more detailed report on complete domain failures.

Regardless though - great work!

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

#362

Post by idiotsecant »

pants2 wrote: post #228
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 have been a Kagi subscriber for years but I do increasingly find myself using Google. It's not good at local searches or news searches. It's also not good at showing quick context like Google's knowledge graph, especially with images. Finally it's considerably slower. Kagi is better for research and knowledge work, Google is still better for quick lookups.

I find the opposite, I can count on one hand the number of times I've deliberately resorted to using google search in the past year*

*except for maps results, Kagi is absolute hot trash for maps. I automatically append !gm to the end of all mappy-type searches. I wish Kagi would just kill their map product and redirect to google maps.

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

#363

Post by sobjornstad »

seviu wrote: post #125
vitally3643 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a Kagi subscriber for several years now. If you're questioning the AI features, know that I am only barely aware they exist. I have never, not even once, accidentally or otherwise, engaged the AI features without going out of my way to do so. I've never seen what their AI is like. I have no idea what it's for or why I'd want it. It's beautiful. Kagi has AI I suppose, but it's over there and not in my face.…

The small thing that annoys me is that I am 100% sure somebody at Apple has a directive: never allow Kagi search integration. I am truly baffled (and annoyed) about this fact.

On iOS, there is an app called xSearch that integrates into Safari and sneakily hacks around the limited search engine options by watching your browsing history for queries to the search engine you've selected in Safari, then immediately rewriting the URL and navigating to the search engine you actually want.

Obviously this has security implications, but I don't ordinarily search for anything sketchy on my iPhone so I'm personally not too worried about it.

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

#365

Post by svachalek »

nekzn wrote: post #91
eb08a167 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enjoy it while you can. Google spent years perfecting the art of steering users away from what they searched for and toward advertiser sites, all while pretending to be a search engine. There's no way showing users the exact answer right beneath their search query is profitable in any meaningful sense. And so, it will end.

What they’ll do is embed ads in the text, which will also be unblockable. I imagine the future will entail running an LLM to remove the ads that another LLM generated :P

Sure, at the beginning it will be some "sponsored by" text, maybe even highlighted for you, that is easy to snip out. But the long game is slowly slowly shifting you towards Russian victory, manosphere rage bait, South African immigration, or whatever other manipulation someone is willing to pay a nickel for.

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

#366

Post by Xunjin »

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.

Hey do you guys have posts or sharing about it? It would be awesome to see what you are trying to accomplish, maybe it's time to post on HN ;)

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

#367

Post by a1o »

xp84 wrote: post #206
seviu wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The small thing that annoys me is that I am 100% sure somebody at Apple has a directive: never allow Kagi search integration. I am truly baffled (and annoyed) about this fact.

Using third-party browsers on iOS isn’t nearly as annoying as it was a few years ago. I had been driven to switch back to Safari a few years ago after trying to make a go of it. But last year I switched back to a third-party default browser and have been happy. Third-party keyboards, still not usable but browsers are basically ok.

> Third-party keyboards, still not usable but browsers are basically ok.

The one third-party keyboard that seems to work is the one from Google, if you want a better experience than Apple’s.

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

#368

Post by JSR_FDED »

nosioptar wrote: post #285
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…

> they were working pretty hard to paper over the fact that they pay a third party to scrape Google Not the least bit surprising to me. I had the misfortune of talking to Kagi's CEO several years ago. Every word out of his mouth was a lie. Kagi's the one search company I trust less than Google.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

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

#369

Post by jwr »

yehat wrote: post #274
jwr wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If a search engine starts censoring by whatever means, I'll not be using it, neither free or paid no matter how good it is (and by definition it can't be). Shills can provide a list of countries they don't want to see, hopefully some crooked search engine will satisfy their desire for censorship.

We are not talking about censoring anything here, just buying paid sources of index data.

I am unhappy with money flowing into Russia, for reasons that should be obvious (and I will not respond to whataboutism-style baiting here).

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

#370

Post by arkadiytehgraet »

Akronymus wrote: post #114
king_geedorah wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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.

There is plenty of unfounded AI-hype astroturfing going on in HN that each instance absolutely deserves to be called out. This guideline is somewhat antiquated for the LLM era. Reporting posts and accounts spitting out blatant LLM-slop does nothing, by the way.
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