I know it’s been getting worse over time, but I could still find what I needed after some digging.
Recently it’s been like 10 minutes of adjusting search terms, still getting completely useless or irrelevant results, and me just giving up afterwards. Other search engines seem just as bad.
People still use Google?
You honestly though the most used search engine has been abandoned by everyone? Maybe share what you’re using instead of just being pretentious?
This is what I call the linux bubble. People who use linux and are used to alternate solutions, which may offer better performance than the norm. Then they surround themselves with other like minded people. So much so that they begin to forget that they are using alternatives rather than the norm. Despite what benefits they gain from alternatives, some people can’t grasp that they are, in fact, alternatives.
Twitter has 368 million monthly users. I find it to be a cesspool of hate, racism, and right wing agenda.
So you would think mastodon or bluesky would have equal or better numbers.
Bluesky has 9.7 million monthly users, which includes a huge recent boost because of brazil ceasing twitters ability to operate. I think that alone was 2 million users.
And mastodon has 975,000 monthly users.
So yes, despite it’s flaws, twitter is still the default in microblogging. By a LOT. But I’m sure the feeling around here is “who still uses twitter???”.
Everybody. Same way everybody uses google. Same way everybody uses instagram. And it’s not even close to being close.
The fact I’m most flabbergasted about is that only a third of people use password managers by default. An independent American surveysource: bitwarden over 2000 “random” Internet users shows 34% use a password manager. The randomness of this survey is probably skewed, which would make the total percentage even lower in actuality.
You can’t actually believe the default search engine in most configurations isn’t used.
I have fully switched to kagi, it’s not perfect but for the average case it’s better than google.
*years? Yes. It used to be the bleeding edge of search and now it’s just profit driven enshittification like the rest of ai-ridden garbage tech wallstreet bullshit.
Elmer can go Fudd himself. Store brand non-toxic craft paste is just as flavorful an half the price.
I’ve been using Kagi since ~February and it’s changed my views on Search. Beforehand, if use a combination of Google, Bing, DDG, and Brave and rarely find what I needed in satisfactory time. Now I’m typically finding it in the top 5 without all the cruft + have access to a handful of LLM assistants to choose from for other tasks (when needed).
I’ve also heard good things about SearXNG.
Might want to give this a read on ol’ Kagi…
I hope you don’t pay for it then, since Vlad himself said,
I recommend Kagi, I’ve been using it for about six months now and results - especially small web results like blogs - are so much better. I also have a pretty good time image searching compared to when I was on Google.
Yes it’s paid, but that to me is the price of resisting enshittification. Find a company that isn’t a publicly traded for-profit world-burner and pay them for their service. Is the idea of paying for email and search an alien concept to me? Yes. But I’m either paying Google whatever €120 a year in eyeballs on ads and an increasingly worse experience, or I’m paying €80 a year and getting a markedly better experience.
Now it’s up to Kagi and Proton to not turn into shitty companies while other competitors catch up and we have a thriving ecosystem again.
Got some bad news about Kagi…
I’ve read it, I read the discussion around it, idk man. One guy’s thoughts on a company and it’s founder isn’t enough to move me off of something without better proof, better alternatives, and worse crimes than maybe having a bad long term vision.
Hopefully every company outgrows it’s founder and becomes a system. We’ll have to see, right now I’m satisfied and that gets me off Google and signals to others I’m willing to pay.
It’s okay if you don’t care, that’s on you and the others who don’t care.
I was about to pay for the thing, and stumbled upon that website that provides quite a bit of substantial “what the fuck?” Reactions from me.
Just throwing the knowledge out there for people like me who do care. :)
Kagi is amazing. I absolutely love its’ filtering features and I use that forums toggle all the time. It feels like such a more relevant experience for me. I tried it out with the 300 searches limit, but that wasn’t even close to enough, turns out I easily use 4 times that in a month and even though it’s not cheap it feels like it’s worth it.
