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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

#561

Post by asciimoo »

vinni2 wrote: post #560
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…

I use a self-hosted Searxng to make it work with my local LLM RAG setup. It works amazingly. Thank you for creating this. I will check out the hister as well.

Nice! Hister provides an MCP interface so you can easily integrate it to your RAG setup.

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

#562

Post by Mr_Minderbinder »

hiccuphippo wrote: post #241
t1234s wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been using DDG for about 8 years instead of Google search. Occasionally use google image search for matching an uploaded image. Use google maps for any local searches (credit to where credit is due its a superior map product).

Yandex seems to be better at image reverse search. Maps is the only one I still use Google for.

Yandex and TinEye satisfy all my reverse image search needs. Google Maps is the only Google service I use. There is simply no substitute for Street View and it is fantastically useful and interesting. Even so it is only a secondary option and I use maps from OpenStreetMap through Organic Maps 90% of the time. I am satisfied if that is the extent of my relationship with them.

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

#563

Post by troad »

vitally3643 wrote: post #515
amelius wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kagi uses Yandex which is Russian.

Do you have a point other than being overtly racist?

Russian is a nationality, not a race. You can say prejudiced, but not racist. In this case it's not even a person, but a product.

It's not prejudice when it's based on a post-facto assessment of the Russian government's mobilisation of their companies for obscene and evil goals like clamping down on free speech, persecuting LGBT people, or trying to destroy Ukraine.

"It's Russian and therefore it's out" is a valid stance in light of all the known consequences of using a Russian product. If Russian people do not like this, they are welcome to break their links to the Russian state by emigrating and founding companies elsewhere, or stay and overthrow their government. Either works for me.

Many Russians have learnt to keep quiet about politics so they can get ahead in Russia, and they seem to harbour some deep-seated delusion that everyone from abroad should play along with this for their own convenience and profit. They whisper 'no war' to one another, by which they mean Ukraine should surrender already, so that this whole unpleasantness (to them) blows over, and the rest of the world goes back to accepting their blood money. No.

Germany has been grappling with its own horrific genocide for a hundred years and still hasn't quite figured it out. Russia is, as of the time of writing, currently undertaking one. Come back in a hundred years, maybe we can talk about Russian products then.

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

#565

Post by troad »

mystraline wrote: post #311
amelius wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kagi uses Yandex which is Russian.

Yandex is great if youre searching for pirated content or for DMCA'd content that ended up on Gitflic.ru Anti-drm tools are a big case in point. And so is Bypass Paywalls Clean Firefox plugin. All of these have been purged from the "Great American Corporate Firewall". Russian people != Russian govt != Russian companies. I just use the tools that work.

[flagged]

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

#567

Post by troad »

subscribed wrote: post #566
troad wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

The US attacks on Iran is a different event altogether from the Israeli genocide in Gaza. You're conflating discrete conflicts with different parties and different modes of engagement.

The US attack on that school is atrocious and I condemn it. While possibly a war crime, it does not meet the definition of genocide, unlike Israel's conduct in Gaza, which certainly does. There's no evidence of recent US conduct amounting to genocide (much historical evidence vis-a-vis American Indians though).

To the extent you wish to penalise complicity in genocide, go for it, but I will notice if you're oddly selective in which genocides you apply that standard to, and which you don't. (Which countries traded with Burma during the Rohingya genocide? Do you know? Do you care?)

> brown children

What does the children's colour have to do with anything at all? Do we grade the severity of war crimes by the (perceived? assigned?) race of the victim? Horrific thought.

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

#568

Post by rglullis »

saltcured wrote: post #554
rglullis wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nothing that requires human input is free. TANSTAAFL does not need a qualifier to apply. "Nothing is really free, so whatever you got 'for free' from a community member or some non-commercial effort was bound to have limited reach" is more like the point I'm trying to make.

Of course we put labor into it. It's not some seance or wormhole communicating with the software dimension. This is the way FOSS is meant to work. I got jobs where an employer was happy to run other people's FOSS software "for free", happy for me to contribute bugs/requirements/patches back upstream, and happy to release our own projects under FOSS licenses. It is a win-win for all involved. That's the whole point of…

You seem to imply that work on FOSS projects is a second-class activity, meant to be done after companies and employers have secured their revenue sources.

This is like trickle-down economics for FOSS and it doesn't work.

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

#569

Post by hojinkoh »

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…

Early Kagi adopter here. I'm actually not aware of most of its AI/LLM features, which is part of why I like it. I noticed Kagi translation when the LinkedIn translator became a meme, but I don't really use any of these features.

That's to say, if one day Kagi also forces AI search summary down my throat and hide the search results, I will definitely leave.

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

#570

Post by account42 »

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…

We really should be investing in a public index infrastructure instead of yet another private search company that puts on a nice face while they are the under dog.
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