If you're looking to kick Google or DDG or whatever I'd recommend giving SearXNG a look. It's a meta search engine. https://docs.searxng.org/ You can self host it, it's pretty easy, or you can just use any one of a wealth of public instances. https://searx.space/
I'm fairly certain Kagi is borrowing from SearxNG and making some slight modifications. The only thing Kagi holds over SearxNG that I see is the maps feature.
I think I might be about to start paying for Kagi. I have SearxNG. Am I dumb for thinking about doing this? Is DDG and the like so bad? Is Kagi actually that good?
So with my new found knowledge of #kagi upsetting me and causing me to leave it... The fact the only other engines that are not just proxying google or bing... Is #brave or #mojeek and while brave one is nice... I just cannot bring myself to use something that funds a biggot... Then mojeek just feels dated and not great...
I am tempted at bringing fuzzysearx back... and even look at trying to leverage the built in ability to add custom engines to look at leveraging other abilities... because searxng really seems like the only ethical way I can see to leverage search engines collecting data...
Ok, fellow #kagi users, a question: They've got a subscription tier that offers code. I currently pay Github for copilot because I'm lazy and like smart autocomplete.
Is there a way to integrate Kagi with vscode instead of using copilot? That'd better align with my desire to not have the entire world end up with three large companies, but I'm mildly clueless on the vscode extensions world.
I've been using DuckDuckGo as my main search engine for a while now. Lately, DDG seems to "correct" my searches. A LOT. I don't know if it's just me or if it's a universal thing, but when I type in a search sometimes not only the results aren't what I was looking for, but I see the query itself has been changed to something I didn't actually search for. It's INCREDIBLY frustrating. I just might have to find a new search engine if this keeps up.
@mike I've been having good results with #Kagi.
I don't notice when search engines change my query because usually the correction is right, and if not I can just click the link to search for the exact string I entered.
While #DuckDuckGo is down, I tried out a few other search engines. I did a search I made yesterday in each. #Bing gave me an interesting looking blog first, then some less-related info from high-trust sources, then an interesting paper, then a bunch of garbage. #Mojeek gave me nothing that looked interesting, just pages that used some of the words from my search. #Kagi gave me the less-related high-trust sources first, then the entire rest of the first page looked interesting.
When #Bing and #duckduckgo is down, #kagi is still working. I’m an happy kagi paying user.
If only they didn’t try to divest themselves printing t-shirts, making a new MacOS browser or a completely-utterly stupid IA, they would be a really cool company.
But companies come and go, it is just a matter of not being dependent and jumping out of the wagon as soon as the enshitiffication becomes too strong.
Gah, had no idea that #DuckDuckGo was using #Bing as a backend. My strict "no-Microsoft" policy means that I've now got to find another search engine...
@stevoooo As of now, Kagi.com is the only sane alternative. It costs a few bucks, no ads, no tracking, and their now run their own index. I'm using it for 2 years now and never looked back.
@louis I've been hearing about #Kagi for a while - having to pay isn't ideal, but if that's the price for not being subjected to adverts and tracking then it's worth it.
I see they have a free trial plan so I think I'll check it out!
@ianRobinson If you are like me, you will end with the next tier up. Unlimited searches for just under £10. I found 300 searches a month just wasn’t enough.
I do more searches also as it’s a pleasure to use #kagi without all the ads and i really like how it looks.
A fun, almost nostalgic toy: #Kagi's SmallWeb project is just a page randomizer of little web pages: https://kagi.com/smallweb/
This sort of thing used to be common in the early days of the web. It's generally been drowned out by noise, commercialism, spam and SEO, but it's a fun little way to spend a few minutes.
(And now I'm remembering the days when I could read every webpage when it came online…)
#kagi.el 0.5 was released yesterday and is now available on MELPA Stable. Most of the highlights have already been mentioned on my timeline:
• Define your own prompts with define-kagi-fastgpt-prompt' • Embed prompts and responses inside #orgmode • A no-cache' parameter for some summarizer commands (so your text flows through Kagi's infrastructure without retention)