I am done with search engines: A rant.
Table of Contents
Google is bad.
Hi, long time no see and welcome. Today I want to talk about a topic or a website that I desperately am in need of. A new search engine. Not like Ecosia or DuckDuckGo, they're using other search engines' crawlers and metadata to show you those results, so using them is just a new fancy look for me. Because the issue(s) I will talk about below is consistent on every search engine these days.
So let's look at a search result when you google something, shall we? You get the wrong answer on the first recommended page and pray to your god if it's not AI-written content, many of the things are wrong when they show you the summarized content, and so on and so forth. When you go searching for images, there is heck lots of AI content that looks horrible.
Other than those facts, google has a surplus amounts of ads that I got tired of. In your search page, in the website you go, etc. That is sick in the worst way possible. I understand that you need to get revenue to continue your operations but really? Are you that desperate?
Also, google is dying in terms of quality. See this blog post.
Alternatives are just as bad.
When I tell other people about this problem, they tell me, "Well, in that case why don't you use DuckDuckGo, Ecosia" or some other search engine. The thing is, as I stated above, when you use for example Ecosia, yes, you are not getting some stuff, but the crawler and indexer behind that search engine is not different than google. It's just a same thing with a different interface!
I agree to the point of which it tells us that this is the best we've got. So I use Ecosia, but the problem is, we need a new search engine, built from ground 0, with a new indexer and crawler that goes through human-review process before adding the website to database so we can protect the search engine from AI bullshit.
Paying money to search?
For a long time, I have made the decision to not use Kagi. To be honest, from the first look, it seems mostly okay. However, For 10$ plus tax, it is simply too expensive. From what I understand, they are not into "region pricing" stuff, but they have "fair pricing". So when you never search in one month, they add credit of 1 month's worth to your account, huh.
So, for me, adding a new subscription is out of the way. Only if I would like to access something like The Assistant, I will buy the 25$ option (maybe). But for now, I will not pay for search, that is a stupid idea. And it has native stuff only for MacOS users, which sucks but they also market these for Mac users. A quick-look at their website will make you understand what I am talking about. This becomes more obvious when you go into the extensions tab.
So, no. I will not get Kagi.
"But Efe, you are paying with your data when you use free platforms!" Do I look stupid to you? I of course know this, and even though I try to give less and less data to companies like Microsoft, Meta and Alphabet, it will still happen because let's face it; We live in a dystopian society, internet had it's peak in 2010's, and it's now going down.
The non-existent solution?
When people see I have the Wikipedia app on my phone, they get surprised. "Just use google" they say, "It is faster" they say. But in reality, I do believe the content in there and I know for a fact that it is not AI generated, and if it is, someone can change it.
I have started to use search engines less and less. Instead, I search stuff in Reddit, Wikipedia, Britannica, you know, the actual stuff that google should've indexed first. I never trust any website that looks like AI generated and I never use a news engine. Because well uh, they suck.
Google clearly stated that as long as it wasn't spam, they did not care about automatically generated stuff on Google News. This includes AI stuff, probably.
Browsers are another problem
Right now, I am using Vivaldi. Before Vivaldi, and before Firefox going crazy with its TOS, I used to use Firefox. I have tried many alternatives, but I never found one that I truly like. Brave is great if you exclude crypto stuff and Brave Search have a long way to go.
So as of now, I still continue to suck up to this AI bullshit and algorithms that feed me rage.
Update
I am writing this ~6 hours after publishing this post. I have found a new search engine named Marginalia Search. I will write about it after I use it for enough time but I like it.
Closing and thanks
Once again, I yapped a lot, and I know that nobody want to hear me yap because why would they, but I want to thank you. Don't forget to e-mail or "Re:" me if you have anything to say. See you next time!