I feel like there are probably some ad based search engines which are privacy and service oriented, but in general even for those there remains a misalignment problem. Hence if I don’t want to be a product now or in the future, what good search engines are there that I can pay for?
ALL HAIL KAGI
Everyone should be aware of the fact that Kagi supports Russia by buying Yandex index API. They excuse themselves with neutrality. Well, DuckDuckGo for some reason took the L and dropped them after the Ukraine invasion, so make your own conclusions here. I think it’s easy to come up with all sorts of justifications for your actions and I cancelled my sub a couple of months back. They do have a decent product, though but it’s also pretty expensive.
What a way to morally stand up to one evil while supporting a greater evil. Google and Microsoft are complicit in the Israeli genocide, like they’re not just American companies, they provide resources, infrastructure, and intellectual support for the genocide and apartheid systems. But you have no problem with DDG using them, right?
Just be consistent.
And what do you think Kagi uses? They rely heavily on the same Bing and Google. If you played around with them you will see most of their searches are identical to what you would get if you did a bing search and then follow up with a google search, you’re not getting much more. The fact of the matter is that there are only 2 real choices of search engines. Google and Bing. There’s a massive gap between them and every other independent search index.
I didn’t push for Kagi… You’re spilling out my point though
I’m just saying that saying “use DDG because it doesn’t use a Russian company’s search engine” while ignoring that DDG uses objectively more evil companies is stupid.
I didn’t know there were paid search engines. Could just list ANY of them for us?
I think I only know of Kagi. Are there any more?
Kagi is my absolute favorite.
Ok cool I saw this one— is it really like the old internet?
I use Kagi. It’s not especially like the Internet at some long-ago date, other than maybe than in that they run a search engine for Usenet archives.
I use Kagi for privacy reasons. They run a no-log, no-profile, no-ads setup, which is what I’d been wanting for some time.
If you’re looking for some kind of retro Internet experience, maybe grab a gopher client and look at gopher servers, or an IRC client, telnet to a MUD, use an FTP client to connect to an FTP server. All of those still have active servers and haven’t changed much, so it’ll still give a comparable feel.
