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.
Bummer. Yes it is kind of spendy for what you get . 5 dollars doesnt cover my searches for a month.
That really sucks because kagi was so good at finding content that wasn’t typical ad spam and slop. Oh well.