noai.duckduckgo.com is the best drop-in replacement for a free pre-AI search engine.
kagi.com is great if you can justify paying for it.
I’ve used both for a long time and have never missed Google, especially in its current state.
Is it just me or does it seem Google is either AI filled or becoming obsolete? Is there an up and comer that can be what Google used to be? Or are we stuck oogling stuff forever?
Submitted 3 weeks ago by Patnou@lemmy.world to [deleted]
Comments
inbn@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
okwhateverdude@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If you aren’t paying for it, you’re the product being sold.
P1nkman@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If the grass is free; you’re the cattle.
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 1 week ago
That’s not always true, point in case is open source software, but it’s good to look into where a company gets its profit from if any.
Well good news, DuckDuckGo has been profitable with privacy respecting ads for a long time, now.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
if you aren’t paying for it, you might be able to afford rent this month
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 1 week ago
Hell yeah! You gotta Duck it!
sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
I use kagi for free but my dad is addicted to google so I might see if he likes it…
Honestly he’s in the demographic that might prefer the ai slop :/
AstralPath@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Kagi is great.
GreenBeard@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
DuckDuckGo, and Ecosia are the two big ones that tend to come up in these kind of questions, although there’s a handful of smaller search platforms out there as well. Bing is even worse than Google at this point. If I recall correctly Ecosia uses a custom search algorithm but still relies mostly on Google’s index at this time, DuckDuckGo is entirely independent.
hexagonwin@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
duckduckgo uses bing doesn’t it? the results seem mostly identical to me
GreenBeard@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
If I recall correctly it queries the Bing API among other niche sources for indexing and acts as a proxy for ad purposes, so while there’s a lot of Bing results, it’s not one-to-one. Unless they changed things recently, it’s possible I missed a press release.
DrFunkenstein@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I’m pretty sure yes, if you use ddg news there’ll be a lot of results from MSN, owned by Microsoft
Witchfire@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’ve been using Kagi as well to good success
crandlecan@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
I fully switched to presearch.com
theywilleatthestars@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’ve been using DuckDuckGo for the past several years.
RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Google has been getting worse since before AI, it’s because it’s advantage stemmed from indexing the public web, but as the web turned into a half a dozen walled gardens it lost that edge.
It’s losing customers to AI so it’s trying to clone their features, pretty, but it’s been trying this with just regurgitating Wikipedia for a while.
I don’t know for sure but I suspect internally the incompetent middle management layer are pushing AI usage as a metric and forcing engineers to ruin their best product because management don’t know the value of Google (because they are by and large morons who use AI).
The AI usage can be avoided with other search engines but the walled garden problem is here to stay, on a closed Internet search is always going to suck.
bravesirrbn@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I don’t know for sure but I suspect internally the incompetent middle management layer are pushing AI usage as a metric
Yeah this is reportedly happening at all the big tech corporations.
The CEOs, SVPs, VPs, etc. are bullshitting each other that AI is multiplying productivity SO MUCH, because that’s what everyone else is saying too. But each of them isn’t actually seeing that happen in their company/org, so they figure that’s because their underlings simply aren’t using AI enough, and the only way to fix the productivity expectation gap is to enforce more AI usage
TabbsTheBat@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
Oh they’re planning to replace the standard link view with AI overview in general :3 source
There’re quite a few alternative search engines; I personally use duckduckgo, but startpage is also good, I hear, I’ve been trying it out in cases where ddg doesn’t get my desired results :3. There’s also searXNG which is more technical, but quite good in terms of fetching results from a bunch of stuff, and a lot of people I know swear by kagi, but that one is a paid service. Those are the main “big” ones I see around. Of course they’re by far not the only ones
AlchemicalAgent@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
Going to pop in with a vote for Kagi. They are paid, but they also run their own index so they don’t use Google at all. Well worth it.
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Google is garbage. It’s a complaint I’ve had for quite a while now. It used to be good at searching and obeying modifiers (-, “quotes” and the like). It would give you tens of pages of results and the result you wanted would almost always be on the first page. Now all it does is give you, in order: AI results that are incomplete or wrong, the best monetized youtube results, sponsored results, and then shitty SEO site results, and you’ll be lucky if any of that contains what you’re looking for. So you try “-“ to eliminate some garbage, but google takes that as incentive to offer you even more of what you don’t want. Then you try “search term” in quotes to be specific, and google offers zero results. Like in the billions of web pages that exist, nobody has ever written or discussed the thing you’re looking for? You get zero because it isn’t monetized or something.
Google is no longer a search engine, it’s an ad-server returning profitably monetized web pages.
mereo@piefed.ca 3 weeks ago
I host searXNG on my home server. It’s heaven. I get better results Google.
Formfiller@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I use duck duck go. Google is tech bro trash
Squizzy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Duckduckgo has a problem where you used to be able to select no location and now that defaults to your real one.
I want non geolocation results.
MrsDoyle@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Duck Duck Go is my default, but increasingly I use the Wikipedia app, because usually I’m looking for detailed information, and it’s a cut-to-the-chase option.
Steve@communick.news 3 weeks ago
Patnou@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yea but kinda seems like I have to pay for privilege.
Steve@communick.news 2 weeks ago
Someone always pays for your search.
It’s only a question of who, and what do they want you to see when you search?sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
You can use it for free if you’re frugal with search. I use DDG and only kagi when I really need it.
Kevlar21@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
These days I just go straight to Wikipedia when possible
mech@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Bing is still worse. Today I searched Rufus on Bing.
The website of the project wasn’t even on the first page of the results.Telodzrum@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
That’s odd, the entire first page of results is about the software when I just searched on Bing. The official site was the top result.
mech@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Oops, I already conditioned myself to ignore the top result cause it’s offset from the others by Bing’s design.
Looks like a sponsored or AI result.
noxypaws@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
I’ve been happy with Kagi. Worth the subscription.
billwashere@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If you can selfhost I’ve gotten degoog setup and enjoy using it.
faltryka@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’ve been using kagi and even replaced the default search on my iPhone with it. Works great
rasterweb@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
I quit Google. No longer use them for search, email, drive, or docs. They infested everything with AI and they bend the knee to fascists. I’m done.
hexagonwin@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
doesn’t seem very popular but ive been using etools.ch lately and it’s decent. it also works without javascript
RamRabbit@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Google seems hell-bent on AI; DuckDuckGo lets you easily disable AI search. Try it out.
duckduckgo.com
squirrel@cake.kobel.fyi 3 weeks ago
They provide this handy url as well: https://noai.duckduckgo.com
CubitOom@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
Duckduckgo is just bing search
tekdeb@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
While I believe most of their results originate from Bing, according to their Wikipedia page they have used over 400 sources including Bing, Yahoo, Wolfram Alpha, Yandex, and its own web crawler. And even if 100% of their results were from Bing, saying it’s “just bing search” is very misleading.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
okay