I think it's not that complicated -- Kagi's search results are just far more useful. I think it's marketed at people who want good search results, not anything dealing with privacy (although, Kagi doesn't log your searches, so it's fully private for most everyday definitions) -- your viewpoint makes perfect sense to me for you and sure I respect it, but I don't think it's right to say that people are linking their credit cards to do a have-to-be-logged-in-first search on Kagi chiefly for reasons of privacy focus.
(I just tried the same experiment Doctorow tried, of searching for something that I'd been unable to find through Google, and Kagi did the same thing for me that it did for him (i.e. found it). That's actually not important enough for me to pay for Kagi, but "Google is shit now" is no fringe opinion and it's pretty easy to verify that Kagi does in practice work markedly better.)
Nia_The_Cat@beehaw.org 8 months ago
vhstape@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months ago
Yes, and I largely disagree with it :/
Atemu@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
I think you’re underestimating how huge of an undertaking a half-decent search index is, much less a good one.
Nia_The_Cat@beehaw.org 8 months ago
thejevans@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
stract.com is the new kid on the block
Zworf@beehaw.org 8 months ago
On the other hand, it doesn’t really matter so much anymore.
LLM is the new search. I can ask it the actual question I have and it will give me the answer. If it’s not exactly what I need I can ask it to specify further.
Contrast that with a search engine that just gives me a ton of bookmarks to sift through to see if they actually might answer my question or are just clickbait.
Of course there’s still some times when you need search, like when you need to find an actual website, or when you need a source reference. But really the need for me is greatly reduced now.