The Mediocrity of Modern Google
om.co
These days, whenever I think about Google, I recall a line from Madame Bovary. “She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris,” Flaubert writes, capturing Emma Bovary’s provincial reality…

These days, whenever I think about Google, I recall a line from Madame Bovary. “She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris,” Flaubert writes, capturing Emma Bovary’s provincial reality and her romanticized dreams of escape. That is Google in a nutshell, isn’t it?

  • Tim_Bisley@piefed.socialEnglish
    21·
    2 days ago

    People keep pushing Kagi. You get 100 free searches to try it. So far I haven’t had a search result from Google thats so bad I need to turn to another search engine, its just a poor user experience.

    I tried to use Startpage and it almost did the trick. It was text search results parsed from google without any of the other crap that shows up in search results these days. However one critical tool was missing - The forums search category. They have other categories like images, news, shopping, etc. I heavily use forum searches when viewing search results and not having it was an instant deal breaker.

    • riquisimo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      3·
      1 day ago

      When replacing big services you’re not going to find a single solution. You will probably find several smaller solutions that all specialize in one or two things.

    • baggachipz@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      202·
      2 days ago

      People keep pushing Kagi because they love it. I know, I’m one of them. Anybody acting like there’s no way out of google’s clutches is following the “we’ve tried nothing, and we’re all out of ideas” mantra.

      • Pirata@lemm.eeEnglish
        27·
        2 days ago

        I’ve tried SearXNG and stayed there. And it costs me a whole 0€ per month. 10€/month for a search engine is insane.

        • taladar@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          7·
          2 days ago

          The Wikipedia page for SearX claims it has been discontinued in 2022. The GitHub repository being archived in 2023 would seem to support that.

        • OmegaSunkey@ani.socialEnglish
          1·
          1 day ago

          I only use SearXNG because it loads faster than DDG for me. It parses very very fast on my low end pc, and thats what I wish.

          • Pirata@lemm.eeEnglish
            2·
            1 day ago

            Yeah, that’s the thing about Sear. You can customise it how you want and that’s it. No need to let some corpo be in control of what and how you see your results.

        • dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          11·
          24 hours ago

          It’s gonna stay free forever, you’re totally not externalizing those costs to someone else. You can’t break the laws of thermodynamics

          You know what they say about when you don’t pay for a service…

          • Pirata@lemm.eeEnglish
            3·
            23 hours ago

            Do you know how SearXNG works? It literally pulls search results from whatever other SEs you define it should pull from. You just get to reap the perks of all engines, without having to deal with their antagonistic design.

            Who pays for all of it in the end? The people who still want to use Google’s service and feed their all-reaching tentacles. But that is their choice.

        • enkers@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          4·
          2 days ago

          Yeah, searx and no looking back here too. The only downside is it’s OotB experience isn’t the best, so you should spend a minute configuring it to add more engines than just google. Oh, that and the occasional outages, but they seem to be less common lately.

      • NOT_RICK@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        2 days ago

        I take it that means you feel it’s worth the cost? I have a hard time since search is something I’ve been so used to being free

        • Sprinks@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          22 hours ago

          For me, yes, but thats because im a heavy search engine user and like the customization features. We pay for the duo plan for both my husband and I. My husband doesnt use it much, maybe a handful of searches a week, but me on the otherhand I far exceed the free search limit with how often I search for things. I also love having the ability to block, lower, or raise a specific site in my results. Very satisfying to open up a shit site, see its shit, and then block it from ever appearing in my search results again.

        • baggachipz@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          91·
          2 days ago

          Absolutely, I do. You have been paying Google: with your privacy, viewing tons of ads, and manipulation via rigged search results. Fixing that is worth the price to me. I admit it requires a shift in mindset, but I couldn’t go back now.

    • HexPat@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      I signed up for 3 free months of Kagi recently. I don’t think I do enough searching to justify paying for a search engine but I have been pleased with search results for what I asked and nothing more.

        • HexPat@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          You get a list of results that looks a bit like Google without the AI answer up top and without any ads. There is a “quick answer” button you can click towards the top of the results that WILL generate an AI response but it isn’t visible by default