[shevy-java]

> Also, getting banned without warning is rough as well.

Agreed. The lesson is: do not become dependent on Google. Ever.

(Unfortunately I still use youtube and a chromium-based browser. Long-term I hope to find alternatives to both problems. Google search I no longer need because Google already ruined it a few years ago; the quality now is just horrible. I can not find anything useful with it anymore.)

[Chaosvex]

Literally just use Firefox.

[rvnx]

Firefox is financed by Google and makes them survive (but yes, clearly the only realistic alternative that is not Chromium-based)

[inigyou]

Use Librewolf.

Firefox would be able to survive without Google, even though it currently chooses not to. Mozilla is not Firefox any more than Linux Foundation is Linux.

[Chaosvex]

They pay to be made the default search engine, true. I'm not aware of there being anything beyond that

[sillyfluke]

The claim that is often repeated in discussions is that Firefox is completely dependent on that money and can't survive without it.

[twohaibei]

Zen browser. Or floorp.

[vincston]

What google search alternative have you found? Im trying out ecosia, duckduckgo and brave search, but i find their search results even worse, so in the second query i tend to bang to google..

[bobmcnamara]

Google Search is over. There may not be a free alternative, it they've lost the arms war between phone number incrementing ad pages, AI spew, and rank hackers.

[distances]

Have you tried Kagi yet? It's pretty popular among HN folks, and I find it easily worth the price.

[bilekas]

Kagi indirectly funds the Kremlin's regime, just to know where your money goes if we're talking about not supporting google.

[BlobberSnobber]

Even worse: it funds the White House’s regime more, by a large margin

[master-lincoln]

You make it sound like a significant amount is going to Kreml but I assume the API cost for using Yandex from Kagi is neglectable and only a fraction of that goes to the Russian government. Isn't this more of a symbolic thing to request not cooperating with Russian companies?

[bilekas]

For some people it doesn’t matter how negligible. And it’s better to know and make up their own mind.

[mrWiz]

I think that "it's better to know" only really holds up if the scope / context is also included. To put it in concrete terms, I'd amend your statement like this:

Kagi indirectly funds the Kremlin's regime by paying for Yandex API access.

[simonklitj]

Damn, how so?

[microtonal]

A small percentage goes to Yandex because they use Yandex as an index: https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio...

[distances]

Thanks, I'll keep from recommending Kagi in the future.

[simonklitj]

Thanks for this! That’s incredibly disappointing.

[sapphicsnail]

How so?

[coryrc]

I use ddg and haven't found better results from searching with google in a long time, but that might just be the kind of things I search for.

[beAbU]

I've been using ddg for years now, and it's heen probably 2 years since I needed to use the "!g" escape hatch.

Very very happy with it.

[andrew_lettuce]

Agree. Historically you would just not get any good results for a search and try Google, but these days it's more likely there just aren't any good results for your search period, regardless of engine. Funny enough that's when I've had better results asking chatgpt or similar because I'm typically after some sort of consensus or summary in those situations.

[Yizahi]

DDG is good enough that I've switched many year ago and never went back. Any time I use Google (!g) to repeat query (recently it's maybe a few times per year) it fails to show anything useful too, so I don't see any benefit to even check it lately.

[rurp]

Similar experience for me. I've been using DDG for years and while the quality has gone downhill somewhat I still rarely use !g because Google almost never has a useful result either if DDG strikes out.

[mark_l_watson]

Maybe have to pay for search? I am experimenting with paying Proton another $10/month for a paid lumo+ account. lumo+ is a private chat like ChatGPT that uses a strong Mistral model and also privacy-preserving web_search LLM tooling under the hood. For about a month I just use lumo+ with the web_search tool enabled. I may not do this forever, but for now I like just having one tool to use. Note: I still use gemini for technical work, but lumo+ for day to day chat and web search.

In the past I just use DuckDuckGo for most search, occasionally Google. That also worked well for me.

[MrDresden]

Kagi

[cess11]

Might want to try https://www.mojeek.com/ .

[fancy_pantser]

have you tried Kagi?