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I'm actually surprised people still heavily use Google search.
Not for some tech snob snark reason, but because it's unusable.
I only ever go back to Google if I'm really desperate, and I can't recall the last time it ever delivered me a result I considered useful.
It's all SEO AI spam, and those are the web results Google returns only after all of its own AI and shopping bloat.
Completely useless.
Unfortunately Google reserve image search is unmovable. I pay for Kagi, and unfortunately their reserve image search is comparatively very poor.
I had my first "internet eating itself" encounter a few weeks ago, when the Google AI result told me something that was factually incorrect, and cited as its source a website that was blatantly AI-generated.
What do you use instead?
Not the person you're replying to, but you could try DuckDuckGo
Ddg is crap. I pretty much immediately went back to google.
That's just Bing with extra slop
Edit: downvotes from people I can only assume are mad that they've been tracked by Microsoft this whole time and can't figure out how to properly channel their anger
https://noai.duckduckgo.com/
It's a sad day when Bing is better than Google, but we've been there for a while. Not to say either is good, I switched to a self hosted SearXNG a while ago and it's so much better.
I consistently get much worse results with DDG/Bing than Google.
Edit: downvotes? My personal experience is wrong?
From the guy going into the profiles of people they disagree with in order to downvote unrelated posts...
(Your votes on Lemmy are public information)
🙄
If you're still using Google I don't think you should be complaining about the AI slop elsewhere.
You might note that I'm not suggesting alternatives that are just as sloppy and worse overall.
I did note that you are not suggesting alternatives, yes.
I would if I had found anything better.
Poorer results while not bending the knee to facists sounds better to me, but you do you.
🙄
So what search engine are you using?
Also not the person you are replying to, but I pay to use Kagi so that I am the customer and not the product.
I wanted to try Kagi because it sounds like they'd be better at curating their database and I wouldn't get SEO results? but they don't have regional or coherent pricing. 5 USD for 300 searches? 10 USD for unlimited searches? It's absurd. I get a whole suite of services for the same price as the "Professional" tier. Kagi's infrastructure can't be costlier than Proton's, or Mullvad's, or addy's, Bitwarden's, or Filen's, etc.
And they're still propped up with mostly scraped data from other engines.
SearxNG until it doesn't work anymore, then maybe.
I used Kagi for a year. It's fine.
I like the idea of paying for this type of service.
I stopped because... IDK something about the CEO I think.
I've been using searxng for the last year or so, I quite like it.
Is there a tier without AI? Seem the pricing is used to pay AI model instead of search
The pricing was the same before they introduced the Ai.
They should charge less for the slop.
I really like their implementation. If you use a question mark in your query it triggers a brief Ai answer so you can avoid clicking links but if your goal is a proper web search, leaving it out provides links without any AI contamination.
Duck is powered by bing and does not block all microsoft trackers with whom they have a partnership.
Bookmark trusted websites and sources and accept that almost all alternative search engines use google/bing, are compromised.
If you are particularly paranoid run your own searxng instance on a anonymously owned server.
Searxng still has to send out queries and receive results, but yes, it's one of the better options, and I mentioned it in another comment.
Regardless, my beef with Google search isn't specifically privacy related, it's that in exchange for giving up some privacy, I get no useful results in return, just slop.
DDG isn't perfect, but it substantially better than most of the available alternatives.
Externally hosted search engines have to make money, you'll either exchange some privacy, or some cash, in exchange for results.
I mostly use DDG, but sometimes searx.
Startpage returns similarly dubious results as Google, but with the built-in proxy functionality and no clutter, so it's also in the rotation.
The thing to understand is that... people are barely searching these days. The vast majority of people are fully dependent on The Algorithm to tell them what they want to see whether that is a youtube video or a reddit/facebook post or whatever. Google is for quick questions, not reading articles or getting educated on a topic. And... gemini is not horrible for those quick answers. And when it IS horrible, people don't actually care. And the rest is SEO hell to whatever the first fandom wiki result is.
As someone who still very much DOES search for things on the regular? I have some concerns with the company (mostly they seem like bog standard tech bro "freedom of speech" libertarians) but damned if I don't love Kagi. Feels like the internet I grew up with combined with the ability to prioritize or block websites (see: first fandom wiki result) and a halfway decent LLM for those "quick question" searches.
IMO Google has better image search than DDG, so I still use it as a fallback
Google image search and location data is way better.
You want to know if Costco is open, they're my go to.
I won't go to their website for anything else, it's all searxng for anything else.
Well, what do you use then. Give us your recommendations