If you believe Google is the most reliable, you can still use it in a private way via :
Startpage
Startpage is a private search engine known for serving Google and Bing search results. One of Startpage’s unique features is the Anonymous View, which puts forth efforts to standardize user activity to make it more difficult to be uniquely identified. The feature can be useful for hiding some network and browser properties.
Get Google search results, but without any ads, JavaScript, AMP links, cookies, or IP address tracking. Easily deployable in one click as a Docker app, and customizable with a single config file.
Yeah, but $10 a month is a lot. And the $5 plan for only 300 searches a month goes by really fast if you have to do any kind of research for anything. Even for trying to figure out what brand of something to buy, you blow through those searches super quick.
maybe $1. That’s way more than the ad revenue search engines get
And where did you come up with this info? Source? Do you really think that search engine ad revenue (for the engine itself, not what one measly advertiser gets back) tops out at “way below” $1 per person?
They’ve said that it costs them 1.5 cents to answer a search query, so that dollar a month wouldn’t go very far. I probably incidentally run 40-50 searches a day between my devices… $10 is a value that works for me.
I’ve been using Kagi as my default since June, and don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.
That sounds unlikely… But they’re a small search provider with a small customer base, so costs will be high maintaining all the infrastructure needed.
As I linked elsewhere, Bing makes ~$10 per user per year. That’s really close to my $1/month figure. And that’s revenue, which doesn’t count advertiser acquisition costs and whatnot.
I’m unwilling to pay $5/month for limited searches, but I’m willing to pay for search if it’s reasonable.
That doesn’t mean the price has to be the same as a fucking Netflix subscription.
Which service uses more computation? Streaming HQ video to millions of people, or running a search engine. Keep in mind, search engines have existed since basically before the internet in some form or another…
Well, it costs Kagi about 1.5 cents to answer a search query. Consider how many searches you use in a month to determine how much they’re making off you at $10/mo.
I’m lucky enough to be in a position to be able to pay for products that I use, instead of relying on freemium, or ad-supported, or data-mined, or pirated products. That hasn’t always been the case for me, so I don’t judge anyone for making a different choice.
If they’re taking in less than 1000 searches of money for 3000 searches, the numbers still aren’t adding up. Someone is misinformed or the product still.
DDG queries can’t really be written the same way you’d write one in Google if you’re after effective results. It’ll take some time to get used to it, tbh I was using DDG alongside Google until I fully switched.
I keep reading that Google’s search results are supposedly much better than DDG’s when my experience is the exact opposite. I don’t even live in an English speaking country and the results I get are a vast improvement over Google’s. It has been this way for me since at least last year, but in my experience DDG had caught up to Google in 2022 already. It could also be that Google has just deteriorated a lot in the last two years (which it definitely has, judging by all the bad publicity they’ve been getting for it), so I’d urge you to give DDG/Brave Search/Bing/Kagi/SearxNG another chance.
I’d also recommend setting an alternative of your choice as the default everywhere and to use it exclusively for like a week before making up your mind about that specific product!
I’ve never used questions to search, I use keywords, even with Google. So if I want info on the Russia-Ukraine war, I’ll search “Russia-Ukraine War”. If I want casualty numbers, I’ll add “casualties” there, probably at the start if I want to emphasize it. Searching “how many people have died in the ukraine war” has never been something I do.
That said, natural language search may be more useful with AI tools though, but for regular search, I’ve always used keyword-dense queries, roughly ordered by priority in the query (important terms first).
They probably mean grammar, since most Google operators do work. If there’s a specific difference in search syntax (other than bangs) though, I’d love to know what I’ve been missing.
Nobody will tell you, but keep the best for the last I guess – Yandex. Russian, results reminiscent of old 2005 open internet, has no regard for US DMCA laws or western Atlantic Council censorship laws. Undisputed and incomparable for web results, reverse image search, videos, anything. Preferably use a VPN though to get more search results variety and for extra privacy. Its privacy is better than Google/Bing, but worse than DDG, but DDG has high censorship.
So I absolutely wouldn’t trust it for anything related to politics or Russian interests. Maybe it’s okay from a privacy and non-Russian interest perspective though, idk, but by default I don’t trust it because Russia is so repressive against media in its country.
That said, it seems as if it’s just reducing the search ranking for Russian “disinformation,” not removing results. That’s annoying, but not as troublesome as Yandex or Google. BTW, I found all of those links through DDG, so it’s not like they’re trying to hide anything.
You posted content from RSF, which is a CIA propaganda outlet.
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) supports RSF’s reporting of media freedom violations throughout the world and especially in Asia.
Yandex altered results to trash Navalny](
Navalny was trashed by about 70% of Russian citizens in a mayor election. His approval rate was absymal, and he was only propped up by western countries to create infighting in Russia. This has been NATO’s motive ever since it was formed.
So I absolutely wouldn’t trust it for anything related to politics or Russian interests. Maybe it’s okay from a privacy and non-Russian interest perspective though, idk, but by default I don’t trust it because Russia is so repressive against media in its country.
You trust Google a lot, looking at your trust in Graphene and other stuff. Are you a western liberal by any chance? Because there is zero reason to trust western media that loves Zionism and genocide. On the other hand, west keeps lying about Russia and China doing genocides.
Also, if you are posting western propaganda outlets like NYT, The Verge et al, I should also be able to post Russian sources on western propaganda. But you will claim it is “Kremlin” stuff and claim it is invalid, like you are saying about Yandex.
That said, it seems as if it’s just reducing the search ranking for Russian “disinformation,” not removing results.
DDG uses Bing’s index and shows western propaganda results.
You are trying to poke the bear, and seem more suited to Reddit than Lemmy.
I don’t see how that has anything to do with Yandex altering search results.
You trust Google a lot
Not sure what you mean…
I trust Google’s security at least as much as other phone manufacturers in the space, I don’t trust their data collection. They’re an ad company, so they stand to gain by having people trust their security, provided that doesn’t interfere with their data collection.
Are you a western liberal by any chance?
Depends on your definition of liberal. I do live in the west, and I do ascribe in Liberalism, but not in what most people today call “liberal.”
zero reason to trust western media that loves Zionism and genocide
That’s pretty charged language.
For your information, I try to get my news from a variety of sources. Some of my favorites are:
Al Jazeera - especially on world events, not so much on middle-east events (esp. the Israel-Palestine war)
The Guardian
Reuters
Reason
NPR
BBC
Wall Street Journal
I’m not a fan of Zionism, but I also dislike Hamas. I’d like to see Israel get sanctioned for war crimes, but also Hamas eliminated as a terrorist organization.
I should also be able to post Russian sources on western propaganda
Sure, by all means, as long as their source their claims. However, there is lots of documentation of Russia interfering with its media that I’m going to be a bit more skeptical vs a more peer-reviewed publication, especially while Russia is involved in an unpopular war.
I’m not saying other countries don’t interfere with their media as well, and things like wikileaks are important to help keep all governments honest.
You are trying to poke the bear
Are you essentially saying you’re a Russian shill? I just think that’s an interesting choice of words, considering the context.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to insinuate with Reddit vs Lemmy, please elaborate.
What to use for search engine. Even ddg is not giving reliable results.
If you believe Google is the most reliable, you can still use it in a private way via :
https://www.startpage.com/
There’s plenty of public instances too https://searx.space/
Couple of public instances too. Basically SearxNG with ONLY google as a source. https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search#public-instances
I’m pretty sure Startpage got sold out to an ad company. I think the best option is just to use SearxNG
They do, but it’s still separated from that business. At worse, it’s more an ethical issue of using something that an Ad company own, exactly like using Google with or without proxies services. https://web.archive.org/web/20210118031008/https://blog.privacytools.io/relisting-startpage/
Thank you
Any alternative to Google Alerts?
Long time looking for such service which monitors web for keywords.
I’ve been happy with Kagi. It’s for-pay but it’s quality to me.
It’s just a bit too expensive imo.
For something I use constantly every day $10 is nothing
but for something you never use $10 is quite a lot.
$5/mo. If that’s too pricey deal with shit 🤷♂️.
Be nice, this isn’t the app next door.
The old saying goes: if you don’t pay for the product, you are the product.
Yeah, still too expensive tho
Yeah, but $10 a month is a lot. And the $5 plan for only 300 searches a month goes by really fast if you have to do any kind of research for anything. Even for trying to figure out what brand of something to buy, you blow through those searches super quick.
Yup, I’d pay maybe $1. That’s way more than the ad revenue search engines get, so it’s a more than reasonable price to pay.
And where did you come up with this info? Source? Do you really think that search engine ad revenue (for the engine itself, not what one measly advertiser gets back) tops out at “way below” $1 per person?
In 2023, Google’s ad search revenue amounted to 175 billion U.S. dollars.
They’ve said that it costs them 1.5 cents to answer a search query, so that dollar a month wouldn’t go very far. I probably incidentally run 40-50 searches a day between my devices… $10 is a value that works for me.
I’ve been using Kagi as my default since June, and don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.
That sounds unlikely… But they’re a small search provider with a small customer base, so costs will be high maintaining all the infrastructure needed.
As I linked elsewhere, Bing makes ~$10 per user per year. That’s really close to my $1/month figure. And that’s revenue, which doesn’t count advertiser acquisition costs and whatnot.
I’m unwilling to pay $5/month for limited searches, but I’m willing to pay for search if it’s reasonable.
That doesn’t mean the price has to be the same as a fucking Netflix subscription.
Which service uses more computation? Streaming HQ video to millions of people, or running a search engine. Keep in mind, search engines have existed since basically before the internet in some form or another…
Well, it costs Kagi about 1.5 cents to answer a search query. Consider how many searches you use in a month to determine how much they’re making off you at $10/mo.
I’m lucky enough to be in a position to be able to pay for products that I use, instead of relying on freemium, or ad-supported, or data-mined, or pirated products. That hasn’t always been the case for me, so I don’t judge anyone for making a different choice.
If they’re taking in less than 1000 searches of money for 3000 searches, the numbers still aren’t adding up. Someone is misinformed or the product still.
Same here, happy Kagi subscriber 👍
DDG queries can’t really be written the same way you’d write one in Google if you’re after effective results. It’ll take some time to get used to it, tbh I was using DDG alongside Google until I fully switched.
I keep reading that Google’s search results are supposedly much better than DDG’s when my experience is the exact opposite. I don’t even live in an English speaking country and the results I get are a vast improvement over Google’s. It has been this way for me since at least last year, but in my experience DDG had caught up to Google in 2022 already. It could also be that Google has just deteriorated a lot in the last two years (which it definitely has, judging by all the bad publicity they’ve been getting for it), so I’d urge you to give DDG/Brave Search/Bing/Kagi/SearxNG another chance.
I’d also recommend setting an alternative of your choice as the default everywhere and to use it exclusively for like a week before making up your mind about that specific product!
Do you mean grammar-wise, or special operators?
Grammar, I’ve noticed I get much better results if I word things more directly instead of like a question
I’ve never used questions to search, I use keywords, even with Google. So if I want info on the Russia-Ukraine war, I’ll search “Russia-Ukraine War”. If I want casualty numbers, I’ll add “casualties” there, probably at the start if I want to emphasize it. Searching “how many people have died in the ukraine war” has never been something I do.
That said, natural language search may be more useful with AI tools though, but for regular search, I’ve always used keyword-dense queries, roughly ordered by priority in the query (important terms first).
They probably mean grammar, since most Google operators do work. If there’s a specific difference in search syntax (other than bangs) though, I’d love to know what I’ve been missing.
Nobody will tell you, but keep the best for the last I guess – Yandex. Russian, results reminiscent of old 2005 open internet, has no regard for US DMCA laws or western Atlantic Council censorship laws. Undisputed and incomparable for web results, reverse image search, videos, anything. Preferably use a VPN though to get more search results variety and for extra privacy. Its privacy is better than Google/Bing, but worse than DDG, but DDG has high censorship.
Yeah, Yandex censors quite a bit, at least since the war with Ukraine:
And Yandex altered results to trash Navalny.
But at least they have a banner when they’re likely censoring stuff.
So I absolutely wouldn’t trust it for anything related to politics or Russian interests. Maybe it’s okay from a privacy and non-Russian interest perspective though, idk, but by default I don’t trust it because Russia is so repressive against media in its country.
As for DuckDuckGo, here’s what I found:
That said, it seems as if it’s just reducing the search ranking for Russian “disinformation,” not removing results. That’s annoying, but not as troublesome as Yandex or Google. BTW, I found all of those links through DDG, so it’s not like they’re trying to hide anything.
You posted content from RSF, which is a CIA propaganda outlet.
Navalny was trashed by about 70% of Russian citizens in a mayor election. His approval rate was absymal, and he was only propped up by western countries to create infighting in Russia. This has been NATO’s motive ever since it was formed.
You trust Google a lot, looking at your trust in Graphene and other stuff. Are you a western liberal by any chance? Because there is zero reason to trust western media that loves Zionism and genocide. On the other hand, west keeps lying about Russia and China doing genocides.
Also, if you are posting western propaganda outlets like NYT, The Verge et al, I should also be able to post Russian sources on western propaganda. But you will claim it is “Kremlin” stuff and claim it is invalid, like you are saying about Yandex.
DDG uses Bing’s index and shows western propaganda results.
You are trying to poke the bear, and seem more suited to Reddit than Lemmy.
You’re going to need to provide some proof of that.
Here’s the media bias factcheck for RSF, it’s rated as mostly neutral, high factual reporting, and no failed fact checks in the last 5 years.
I don’t see how that has anything to do with Yandex altering search results.
Not sure what you mean…
I trust Google’s security at least as much as other phone manufacturers in the space, I don’t trust their data collection. They’re an ad company, so they stand to gain by having people trust their security, provided that doesn’t interfere with their data collection.
Depends on your definition of liberal. I do live in the west, and I do ascribe in Liberalism, but not in what most people today call “liberal.”
That’s pretty charged language.
For your information, I try to get my news from a variety of sources. Some of my favorites are:
I’m not a fan of Zionism, but I also dislike Hamas. I’d like to see Israel get sanctioned for war crimes, but also Hamas eliminated as a terrorist organization.
Sure, by all means, as long as their source their claims. However, there is lots of documentation of Russia interfering with its media that I’m going to be a bit more skeptical vs a more peer-reviewed publication, especially while Russia is involved in an unpopular war.
I’m not saying other countries don’t interfere with their media as well, and things like wikileaks are important to help keep all governments honest.
Are you essentially saying you’re a Russian shill? I just think that’s an interesting choice of words, considering the context.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to insinuate with Reddit vs Lemmy, please elaborate.
Do Russia have some fuck up law like USA that the government can access the data of Russian’s companies?
I would not use anything in Russia as Russia isn’t a democracy and does not allow freedom of the press
…while protecting the president of Freedom of The Press, as he stays away from US gov dictatorship assassins?
Kagi. It’s better here.