Pluralistic: Too big to care (04 Apr 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.net

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/14100831

"No, seriously. All those things Google couldn’t find anymore? Top of the search pile. Queries that generated pages of spam in Google results? Fucking pristine on Kagi – the right answers, over and ov

  • sbvEnglish
    153·
    9 months ago

    I love the idea of paying for a high quality service that I use, but Kagi was significantly worse than Google. I searched for local businesses, programming questions, and general knowledge stuff.

    I’ll try it again in a year or two and see if it works for me.

    • scrion@lemmy.worldEnglish
      221·
      9 months ago

      I switched to Kagi about 6 months back. It is overall better, but at least on par with Google, also as far as tech / programming - related questions go. Whenever I do not get a useful result from Kagi, it literally finds nothing - I then try Google for verification, which also lists absolutely no results. That happened approximately 4 times since I switched.

      Kagi is worse than Google for: reviews, memes, porn, as well as “descriptive” searches, i. e. when trying to describe the desired result using natural language, e. g. “video game character that swallows everything” (I made that up just now for Kirby).

      Kagi’s ability to use lenses and assign weights to sites can make a big difference.

      At first, they didn’t have anonymous payments and an unattractive pricing model, but that has been fixed for a while, otherwise I wouldn’t have switched.

      Overall, I am very satisfied and have absolutely zero plans of ever using Google again.

      • ImgonnatrythisEnglish
        9·
        9 months ago

        I find Kagi results slightly better but the interface is so much nicer and site ranking is great. Mostly though whenever I try using Google it just feels scummy and more obvious than ever that they are trying to shove ad garbage down my brain. I really hope I never need to go back to that again. Agree that crypto payment option for Kagi is clutch, but wish they made that more front and center. Unless you look for it Kagi wants your name, address, and credit card number and all your searches are linked to that. That’s even scummier than Google.

        • darreninthenetEnglish
          6·
          9 months ago

          They claim that they don’t link/save your search history so although they have your details for payment, technically it’s not linked. If they aren’t lying…

          • ImgonnatrythisEnglish
            32·
            9 months ago

            I also don’t lie and will send you $10,000USD if you send me your credit card number, cell phone number and social. If I happen to accidentally leak your info a few thousand of my friends I will be sure to give you 10% off of a partially reputable ID protection watchdog service. If you trust random corporations that have almost no enforced security oversight, you really should trust this friendly internet stranger as much if not more.