[ravenstine]

I know this thread is about ChatGPT, but if you're still using Google then I suggest giving Kagi a try. It's a paid search engine, but I've been using it for quite a while now and really enjoy it. With Kagi you can rank and downrank domains as well as block them. There's also this think called "lenses" which are basically filters for specific kinds of searches. For instance, I have a "Programming" lens and a "Academic Research" lens.

> Personally, I wouldn't go long on search engines that don't have a strong ML component to them in the future.

What's kind of ironic about this is I think search engines may have mistakenly moved away from strong ML in the sense that you're thinking of.

Yes, ML is being used for recommendations much more than ever, but in terms of heuristically finding pages with the keywords you entered, mainstream search engines have become significantly worse at it. I remember a time when The Google would find any pages with the keywords you entered. In recent years (before I stopped using it), I noticed an increasing number of times where I knew it had a page indexed but it would refuse to include it in the results for whatever reason. Either its ability to fuzzy search pages seemed diminished or it would just not match something word-for-word. I could sometimes figure this out when the page I was looking for previously accidentally came up in the results for another barely-related search, so I knew it wasn't that the search engine was culling old pages. Though I'm sure they're doing that as well where they think they can get away with it.

Recommendations and curation are largely overrated, and that's where a lot of ML has been mistakenly applied. Well, I say mistakenly in the sense that it benefits the individual and society. Recommendation engines do serve the purpose of the company selling those recommendations.

A true application of machine learning to answer engines is the future and will be a big problem for companies that fought the advertising wars by banking on recommendation engines. That is unless they turn their ship soon enough.

[viraptor]

> With Kagi you can rank and downrank domains as well as block them.

This is a killer feature and I don't understand why ddg and Google don't do it. Google doesn't even have to respect that list for ads. Just give me a way to remove all results from domain X, Y and Z. There are already extensions which do that, but I can't use them on my mobile. It would improve my Google satisfaction massively since it's normally the same blogspam that I run into.

[davidmurdoch]

Blocking domains used to be built in to Google Search.

[spritefs]

This is something that could very easily be done with a meta search engine or alternative frontend like whoogle (assuming it isn't already implemented, could be)

[david_allison]

Kagi's 'sourced' LLM is available for free currently: https://labs.kagi.com/ai/contextai

[Agraillo]

Thanks for mentioning. Interestingly, I recently tested several systems with identical questions (https://www.perplexity.ai/, https://www.phind.com (formerly beta.sayhello.so). The Kagi beta is sometimes on par, sometimes much better. Try [ what guests who are not actors were interviewed by smartless podcast ]. Most gives a mix of actors and non-actors, but Kagi's both Web+AI and AI sections provides correct answers.

[duckmysick]

This is fun. I tried this prompt: "Should I become a paying customer of Kagi?"

I like how it links references to support the arguments. It even gives cons and one of the sources is a HN thread from 2016! [1] It's not there yet though, because that one was about the now defunct online store platform and payment processor.

On the other hand, maybe it's my fault. I didn't specify that I meant Kagi the search engine. But it's promising.

1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12200972

[odysseus]

Note that Brave Search also has "lenses" / filters, and it has them for free. https://search.brave.com/goggles

There's a copycats removal goggle and a HackerNews-top1000-sites goggle. I use them from time to time, but wish I could automatically include the filter with all searches by default (or maybe there's a way and I don't know how).

[t0bia_s]

"I suggest giving Kagi a try. It's a paid search engine"

I dont like the idea of linking my search queries with credit card.

[hgomersall]

I can only assume if you don't think Google knows exactly who you are, you must have much more internet hygiene than most people do.

[t0bia_s]

I don't use any google product over 6 years.

[supermatt]

You posted multiple youtube links here 1 month ago. A link to a google search 9 months ago. And thats just the stuff you felt the need to post on hackernews. Clearly you use google products.

[t0bia_s]

I dont have to be log in to watch youtube (I use FreeTube). At the end... Yeah, I use google product everyday, because of DNS.

Point was, that I refuse to use search engine that is tighten to my credit card.

[alwayslikethis]

Yeah. I don't mind paying, but no amount of assurance is enough to convince to put them in a position easily link my web activity with my credit card, and hence real life identity. Just let me pay with Monero or something.

[loehnsberg]

+1 for Kagi: I have been using it for a year now. I still use Google on my phone (Kagi's own browser Orion is still a bit buggy), so I can compare daily. Classic search results are comparable, with lenses they are even better, plus Kagi has no ads. Also highlights have dramatically improved over the past year. I hope they find a way to filter out the noise generated by ChatGPT generated content.

[pbronez]

+1 for Kagi. The lenses and customization are nice, but I switched just for the raw query speed. It’s the snappiest service I use daily.

[michaelsalim]

Really? I'd +1 for kagi too. But I have 2 problems with it. The first is the load speed. Sometimes it just takes so long that I just repeat my search to Google, especially on phones. By long I meant a few second so it's not that bad. Just long enough that I lose patience.

I'm not sure if it's issues with my connection since I rarely go to Google nowadays. But I never felt the same problem with Google.

In case you're curious, the second issue I have is with private browsing. The session is not carried over so I'm not logged in. I keep forgetting this and kept having to manually open Google and retype my query. I guess not technically Kagi's fault but still.

[freediver]

Kagi has a private session token feature that you can use to carry on searching in private window (also a browser extension that does this automatically).

[t0bia_s]

But still you have to be log in with your account that is linked with your credit card.

[petesergeant]

If you used a prepaid card in a different jurisdiction (and that didn’t verify names), anyone coming after you would need warrants from two countries or to have breached two systems.

[t0bia_s]

So private mode in browser won't change anything to be clear.

[redox99]

Back when Kagi was free by invitation, I tried about 10 or 20 queries on both Google and Kagi, and Kagi was equal or worse in all of them. It lacked crucial features like showing how old each result was. YMMV.

[ekianjo]

> I suggest giving Kagi a try

Does not have a sound business model. Let's not waste time on something that is not viable.

[xp84]

Are you implying that advertising is the only viable business model? I really hope you're wrong, if so. Ads have corrupted and made worse everything they've touched online. I would really like to see a new generation of services that aren't ad-based.

Personally it seems weird to me that people assume things like search and email must be completely "free with ads," while nobody expects anything in the offline world to be free with ads. Even TV, if we're being honest, since while broadcast technically exists, it seems the vast majority of people who watch it pay for cable. Why couldn't ad-free gmail and search be a $20 addon to your internet plan? Most people couldn't function normally with NO search engine today, so what's wrong with allocating the kind of money to it that would buy 2-3 cups of coffee?

[thayne]

> Why couldn't ad-free gmail and search be a $20 addon to your internet plan?

A lot of ISPs include email. and it is usually terrible.

[xp84]

Sure, but it’s not because of the lack of ads, but rather because they know virtually nobody uses it. I was imagining paid Gmail, but Internet “with Gmail(tm)” being a bundle they would advertise, like when DirecTV offered TiVo. Or when you can buy HBO through Amazon Prime.

[thayne]

But nobody uses it because it isn't as good as gmail. Before Gmail, it was a lot more common to use your ISP's email. And given the current monopoly power of ISPs I'm pretty doubtful that any such bundling would be in users' best interests.

[ekianjo]

> Are you implying that advertising is the only viable business model?

No. does not mean that Kagi's current business model is viable either. Strawman much?

[jlarocco]

So what?

For now it's clearly better, and not very expensive.

If it fails, I'll find something else, until then why not use it?

[freediver]

Care to expand on that?

[s3p]

I will. As a Kagi user I loved the quality and authenticity of search results but couldn't justify paying $10 / month for it. In my view that is far too expensive for something I can get for free from Google/DDG with concessions.

[freediver]

Fundamentally there are only two business models available for search.

Since searching the vastness of the web in under 500ms is not free, it is either the user paying for that, or a 3rd party (usually advertisers) paying on the behalf of the user. We (Kagi) thought that for something as intimate as search the latter made no sense, hence the birth of paid search business model where incentives between the user and search engine are aligned.

Price not being right for you currently is another matter, and hopefully one day it will be (you could help by sharing feedback how to improve the product, and there is new Kagi pricing coming up soon).

I personally pay for YouTube Premium ($15/month I believe?) just to not have to see ads on any device I watch YouTube on. Many people would never consider that, but many (~25 million subscribers [1]) still do, despite being able to watch videos for free, availability of adblockers and what not. So YouTube Premium makes half a billion dollars every month and that is essentially using the same business model as Kagi's.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1261865/youtube-premium-...

[Physkal]

If allowed, how does kagi perform with adult searches?

[edgyquant]

I paid for it before even using it. So I disagree that you not wanting to justifies claiming it’s a bad business model

[ekianjo]

They license search results from other search engines, and other search engines have the ability to increase their fees anytime they want to make Kagi suffocate if needed. It's not sustainable.

[freediver]

There is a an objective risk of building on top of somebody else's platform. However, that does not mean that the business model is not sound, but that perhaps the execution may be limited in terms of how big it can get. (Kagi's aspiration was never to be a Google killer [1]).

Companies are built on top of other platforms all the time. TikTok is building on top of iOS and Android. Zynga made first $1bn building on top of Facebook platform. Honey a chrome extension was acquired for $4bn. Those are all businesses building on top of somebody elses platform.

In terms of Google's motiviation to suffocate it, even if Kagi had 10 million customers, it would be a drop in the sea for Google. And Kagi's very existence helps Google with monopoly issues so it is hard to see why would Google want to openly suffocate it. Even if it did, there are plenty of other search indexes out there (Bing, Yandex, Mojeek...) that Kagi can source. What users love about Kagi is not just the quality of search but innovative search features that are independent of results.

What matters at the end of the day, is that Kagi is already serving thousands of paying customers, they love the product and if anything that is the validation that a business model is working.

[1] https://kagi.com/faq#Google-killer