Someone (average smartphone user) complained to me the other day that there isn’t a clear solution to navigating the web because it’s either ai slop or the results are poor.

And I kinda agree, nowadays you do have to put in some more effort to get what you’re looking for.

And so I told them I’d compile a list of which search engines are best for what purpose.

So far I have:

Startpage: works, but does a poor job of finding product codes and whatnot.

Duckduckgo: gives more general results afaik

Ecosia: works great but relies on bing

I have tried things like qwant ect but haven’t really settled on those.

Any other suggestions?

I’d tell em to use udm14 but it’s still google so I’d rather keep that as a plan B.

  • graynk@discuss.tchncs.de
    21·
    5 hours ago

    I’m not exactly on board with needing an account with a search engine. That makes it super easy to track you.

    https://help.kagi.com/kagi/privacy/privacy-pass.html

    they have a built in AI despite calling themselves “human-focussed”

    Because it’s a tool that can serve humans. Not strictly search-related, but their AI-based translation tool is genuinely great and very useful to me.

    https://help.kagi.com/kagi/why-kagi/ai-philosophy.html

    You don’t have to use built-in AI, it only triggers when you explicitly ask for it and you can completely disable it in the settings.

    They also have anti-slop filters, BTW: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/slopstop.html

    Finally, not sure what models the search summarizer and the translation tool use, but the assistant lets you use open weights model like Kimi, GLM, DeepSeek et. al.

    • mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      1 hour ago

      You don’t have to use built-in AI

      I don’t care. It’s bundled in with even the basic plan, which means you’re paying for it, even if you don’t use it. And no, it’s not magically better to use open models.

      I don’t get how this concept is so hard to understand.